Oral Answers to Questions

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Renaissance in the Regions

Kevan Jones: If he will make a statement on the impact of the renaissance in the regions programme.

James Purnell: Renaissance in the regions is transforming England's regional museums. More than 13 million visits were made to renaissance hub museums last year, of which 3.7 million visits were made by children.

Kevan Jones: May I first congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment to his new post, and add that I am sad that my good friend the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) is not on the Conservative Front Bench? Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the north east regional museums hub, which with Government support has generated record numbers of school visits to museums throughout the north-east, including Beamish open air museum in my constituency, which received 43,000 school visits last year? Will he take time out of his busy schedule to visit Beamish museum and the north-east museums hub to thank them for the tremendous work they are doing on behalf of the museum service in the north-east?

James Purnell: I would be delighted to visit Beamish with my hon. Friend and to see the work being done in the north-east. The £1.4 million that has been invested has enabled us to treble the number of visits by children, and Beamish is only one of the many world-class cultural attractions in the north-east. Thanks to the money that has been invested over the past 10 years, culture in Britain is truly world class, and my goal is to make sure that it stays that way.

Robert Key: May I welcome the Secretary of State to his post and say how much I am looking forward to him and his Ministers visiting Stonehenge? One element of the renaissance in the regions programme is to do with archives of museum and archaeological material. Will he look into the problem in the English Heritage and Department for Culture, Media and Sport project for archives in the regions, which has ground to a halt causing a crisis in access to archaeological and museum archives?

James Purnell: I know that the hon. Gentleman has raised that matter in previous questions. Funding for local archaeological services is primarily the responsibility of local authorities, but we are looking into the matter and I would be happy to meet him to discuss any specific concerns he might have.

Tony Lloyd: I welcome my right hon. Friend to his post. I am sure that he is as enthusiastic about access for his constituents to museums and libraries in Manchester and the north-west as I am about such access for mine. However, is he aware that the renaissance in the regions programme is successful not only because so many young people are visiting our museums and libraries but because many of them come from non-traditional museum and library-visiting homes? Can we ensure that money is in place in the future to enable the programme to continue?

James Purnell: As my hon. Friend knows, we are still in discussions on our spending review settlements and it would be brave to make a commitment before that is decided. However, I can say that I share his strong support for renaissance in the regions. It is not a one-off project; we intend it to be ongoing. It builds on our other great successes in museums policy, such as our free charging policy which is being imitated by the right-wing Government in France—although, it appears, not by the British Opposition Front-Bench team—and is being followed with interest around the world.

Edward Vaizey: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box, although I should add that I am also sad that the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) has departed from the post. He is a young man of great promise, and I am sure that he will do well. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware of recent Culture, Media and Sport Committee warnings about rumoured cuts to renaissance in the regions funding. Will he assure the House that he will heed those warnings, particularly as we learn today that per capita lottery arts funding in England has fallen to its lowest level ever—a full £1 less than four years ago, and four times lower than in Scotland and eight times lower than in Wales?

James Purnell: As the hon. Gentleman knows, overall lottery revenue has been declining, which explains the situation he describes. We intend renaissance in the regions to be an ongoing programme. It is a successful project and the Select Committee said that it provided the Treasury with an example of an ideal programme to be funded. I am sure that such comments will be taken on board, but we cannot make any announcements before the spending review.

Brian Iddon: Last Saturday morning I visited Bolton museum and art gallery, where I met one of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's constituents, Frances McIntosh, who pointed out that the portable antiquities scheme will run out of funding at some time in the future. Will my right hon. Friend consider the funding of that scheme, because I saw on Saturday morning—part of national archaeology week—that it does excellent work in engaging children in archaeology?

James Purnell: That picks up on the point that was being made by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. I am committing myself to lots of meetings, but I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that.

Casinos

Tom Brake: If he will make a statement on the Government's policy on the casinos proposed under the Gambling Act 2005.

James Purnell: I set out my next steps in the written statement that I gave on Monday 16 July. I have written to the 16 local authorities recommended to license a large or small casino to confirm their continued desire to do so.

Tom Brake: I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. In September 2004, the Government stated that their approach to casinos would secure protection of the vulnerable and ensure that new, regionally significant casino developments delivered optimum tourism and regeneration benefits. What has changed since that statement, and why was that new-found prudence not mentioned by the Prime Minister and other Ministers when they voted for up to 40 new regional casinos?

James Purnell: I am slightly confused, because I thought that the Liberal Democrats opposed that policy. Perhaps there is a split between the Liberal Democrat spokesman for London and the Front-Bench spokesman on this issue. Our policy is clear: we have listened to the concerns expressed in the House and in the other place and, as the Prime Minister said, the right thing to do is to see whether there are better forms of regeneration than a regional casino. We will be looking at that over the summer and will report afterwards. I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman to reconcile with his Front Benchers, with whom he obviously disagrees.

Gordon Marsden: My right hon. Friend will know that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) and I have both read his written statement very carefully. It is important to put it in the context of the Prime Minister's remarks at Prime Minister's questions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons why the super-casino has been such a major issue in my constituency has been the need for a major and significant economic regenerator that sustains instead of just building new infrastructure? Will he give me an assurance that the issue of a sustained economic regenerator will be central to his considerations this summer?

James Purnell: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I gather that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), who has responsibility for sport and licensing will meet him later this week to discuss that point. Regeneration will be at the heart of those considerations. As my hon. Friend knows, the taskforce looking at his constituency and council area has already met and is due to report shortly. It has been looking at exactly that issue.

Malcolm Moss: Can the Secretary of State enlighten the House as to why, only a week or so ago and from that Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister changed the Government's policy on casinos at a stroke? Was not the Prime Minister present at Cabinet meetings that endorsed the 888 principle?

James Purnell: It is sensible to listen to what Parliament says. Concerns were expressed in this House and in the other place: we listened to those concerns. I know that the hon. Gentleman was a great supporter of the policy, so he must be very disappointed, but the policy that we have announced is right. We will listen to the concerns that are expressed.

Jeremy Hunt: I welcome the Secretary of State to his position. He has a personal interest in the arts and culture, although I fear that with him behind the roulette table, the country may learn that it is unwise to gamble everything on red.
	Was the Cabinet consulted on the decision to cancel the super-casino or was it taken from the comfort of a large, soft No. 10 sofa?

James Purnell: There was a proper process of consultation around Government. The Prime Minister and I took the decision together after discussions with colleagues in the Cabinet. It was exactly the right process for taking that decision.
	I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his position on the Front Bench, as part of his meteoric rise. I also pay tribute to my predecessor. I am looking forward greatly to working with her in her new role and I could not have greater respect for her. I also pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's predecessor, for whom I also have great respect. He made the one cardinal mistake in today's Tory party of actually having a policy. I am sure that that is not a mistake that the hon. Gentleman will repeat.

Jeremy Hunt: I think that the answer is that the Cabinet was not consulted on the decision to cancel the super-casino. Is not the confusion that many local authorities now feel about the policy partly caused by the fact that on the one hand we have No. 10 briefing that the Prime Minister is against casinos in principle, but on the other we have the Secretary of State's statement on 16 July that his Department wishes to support local authorities who want to use casinos as a regeneration tool? What is his policy on casinos, or is it the case that the Government's left one-armed bandit does not know what its right one-armed bandit is doing?

James Purnell: The hon. Gentleman should listen to the answer, because I gave him an exact answer, which was that Cabinet colleagues were consulted, and the decision was taken in absolutely the proper way. However, the interesting question is, "What is his policy?". I have been listening to him for the past few weeks and I have absolutely no idea. Does he agree with his shadow Chancellor, his leader and his predecessor, all of whom said that it was the right decision that the casino should to go to Manchester? Is his party in favour of regional casinos or not?

Tourism

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: What assessment he has made of the impact of recent security incidents on tourism to England.

Margaret Hodge: I am pleased to tell the House that VisitBritain and tourism industry leaders have reported only a negligible impact on tourism, with few booking cancellations.
	The firm and effective response by the police and security services did much to reassure domestic and overseas visitors. Likewise, the fact that many high-profile televised events went ahead in London, such as the Diana tribute concert, the Gay Pride march and the Tour de France—in Scotland, there was also the T in the Park festival—did much to reassure visitors.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Portsmouth is the historic home of the Royal Navy and is held in great esteem and affection by many people from all over the world. We have many naval heritage and service heritage sites, which attract hundreds of thousands of visitors, both national and international. What advice would my right hon. Friend give those visitors in this time of heightened national security?

Margaret Hodge: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I would advise them to go to Portsmouth because, as she said, there is an enormous amount to see, including HMS Victory, the Mary Rose and Charles Dickens's birthplace. Of course, to ensure their security we give constant advice on security levels. We in the DCMS work with the Home Office and others to ensure that we give proper advice to all those who provide tourist attractions.

Don Foster: May I welcome the Minister and the entire new Front-Bench team to their posts? However, the Minister will be aware that security incidents do affect tourism, and there was, for instance, a 7 per cent. drop in visa applications following the 7/7 bombings. In those circumstances does not tourism need more support, not less? Will she therefore explain why the Government have cut the funding to VisitBritain, with the loss of 80 jobs, downgraded the role of the chairman of VisitBritain and delayed yet again the publication of the tourism plan for 2012?

Margaret Hodge: In fact, 2005, which was an extremely difficult year, saw a growth in tourism in London. It is really important for all hon. Members to realise that when there are terrorism threats and security threats, we should not overplay them at the expense of British industry in general and tourism in particular.
	The funding for VistBritain is £50 million, which is much more than when we came into government. Across the public sector, about £300 million goes into supporting tourism, and, of course, the private sector plays a role.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about the short delay in publishing the tourism strategy for the Olympics. It is absolutely appropriate, with a completely new team in the DCMS, that we feel that we own that document. I have already had discussions with the industry, which feels perfectly at ease with the fact that the document will be published in September.

Mark Field: Will the right hon. Lady make sure that her Department gets across the message that London is open for business—particularly the west end of London, although the same applies to suburban London, as I am sure that she would make clear? Our theatres, museums, and galleries, as well as a vast array of retail outlets, are very much open for business and very much need tourism, both international and from within the UK.

Margaret Hodge: As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, London is the No. 1 international destination for tourists, and we need to maintain that and ensure that it is sustained in the future. However, we also want to ensure that visitors to London take advantage of the many other tourist attractions right across the UK, so that the benefit is felt by all regions of the country.

Adrian Sanders: Although the Minister says that there is relatively little change in inward tourism, the fact is that, no matter what measures are taken to deter people by making it more difficult to fly, the numbers increase. The fact is that our seaside resorts are crying out for more tourists. Will she take note of the Select Committee report that identified poor transport links as the real problem of getting people into British seaside resorts?

Margaret Hodge: The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that the balance of trade deficit remains a growing one, and we need to address that issue constantly and properly, to encourage more inward-bound tourists and to ensure that more people stay in the UK and enjoy the many attractions that we have here on their holidays. As he knows, in my previous job, I took a particular interest in ensuring the regeneration of many of our seaside towns. I will maintain that interest in my current job. Although he alluded to one issue—transport infrastructure—there are many others, and I look forward to working with him and others who are affected by the decline in tourism at seaside resorts to ensure their proper regeneration, so that they, too, can enjoy the prosperity that the rest of Britain enjoys.

Music Studios

Ian Lucas: If he will discuss with ministerial colleagues increasing Government spending on music studios accessible to young people.

James Purnell: With my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, we have asked the former Live Music Forum chairman, Feargal Sharkey, to work with key music industry figures, local and regional government and other potential partners to explore what funding opportunities might exist to establish a network of music rehearsal and performance spaces across the country.

Ian Lucas: I am delighted to hear that announcement from the new Secretary of State. In Wrexham, the energy, enthusiasm and talent of young people has been harnessed excellently by Wrexham youth service and a studio has been opened. It is hugely successful, engaging young people and creating bands for the future. Of course, bands are one of the UK's greatest exports. I am delighted that he has appointed Feargal Sharkey, who opened the Wrexham studio, to take that forward. Will he please encourage as many hon. Members as possible, from both sides of the House, to get involved with young people and to encourage the opening of studios in their constituencies?

James Purnell: I am very happy to do so, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for helping to bring the project to Wrexham, which will lead the way in rehearsal spaces and has shown the great advantage that they can have, both in giving young people something positive to do and, we hope, in creating successful bands in the future. We are looking forward to working with the music industry to ensure that more such spaces can be opened around the country and that they can provide technical and creative expertise to help the industry to grow.

Kelvin Hopkins: First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment. He may be aware that Luton Youth Music is quite wonderful, quite superb, with hundreds of young musicians playing music of all kinds. Nine days ago, the Luton Youth Jazz orchestra was judged to be the best youth jazz orchestra in the country at the national youth music festival in Birmingham. May I invite my right hon. Friend to visit Luton to talk to the young musicians and, indeed, the adults who service them to find out what facilities the young musicians would like?

James Purnell: How could I resist? We will ensure that we visit Luton, as well as potentially the constituency of every other Member who is in the House today, and I look forward to doing so and seeing whether Luton can be one of the places that successfully bids for one of those rehearsal spaces.

PE Lessons

Dai Havard: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on provision of physical education lessons in schools in the last 12 months.

Gerry Sutcliffe: The Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport work jointly to deliver the national school sport strategy. Eighty per cent. of children in school sport partnerships now do at least two hours of high-quality PE and school sport a week. Both Departments will continue to work closely to develop the plans to offer all children and young people five hours a week of sport.

Dai Havard: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but I notice that the title of his colleague with whom he will hold discussions is the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. In those discussions, will he also consider the facilities that are being made available to families, so that parents can join their children in physical education? Will he also ensure that any good practice that is developed will be discussed with Ministers from the devolved Administrations, so that we can have a programme that benefits the whole United Kingdom?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I appreciate my hon. Friend's warm acceptance of what we are trying to do, and I assure him that this really is about participation and ensuring that schools and community sport come together and that, with the £100 million that we will spend, we really do increase participation in sport.

Nicholas Winterton: Does the Minister accept that, although physical education is good for all young people, and perhaps also for quite a number of adults, team sports in schools are particularly important? Team sports can inculcate discipline and a sense of working together. Team spirit and team sports are critical. What emphasis is the Minister— [ Interruption. ] I know that we can have a lot of sport in here today. What emphasis is the Minister placing on team sport?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman is taking the idea of team work and competition seriously. Obviously, he can talk to members of his Front Bench about how he can do that within the Conservative party, although I think it will be difficult. On the serious point about competition in schools, over many years competition has been seen as a dirty word. It is important to make competition a key element of inter-school and intra-school sport. The announcement last week will help to do that. Clearly, a lot of work has to take place with the national governing bodies of sports and the schools associations, but if we are united, we will see a sea change in competitive sport, which will bring benefits in terms of team work, competition and individual development.

Maria Miller: It was welcome to hear last week about the additional support for sports in schools, but in real terms it will mean about £3 extra per child per year for children in our schools. That is against the backdrop of a 50 per cent. cut in lottery funding for grassroots sports. Is the Minister confident that sports teachers will be able to deliver on the Prime Minister's promise of making participation in sport a new British characteristic?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I hope that I do not detect that the hon. Lady is decrying the Olympics and the proper funding of the Olympics. She is right to make the point about the £100 million. It is additional money, on top of the money that is spent on school sports anyway. A great deal of that money will go towards coaching, the development of coaching, and the competition managers who will assist teachers. I am confident that the money will be well spent and that it will deliver what we all want to see: increased competition and participation in school sport.

Community Amateur Sports Club Scheme

Andy Reed: What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the community amateur sports club scheme; and if he will make a statement.

Gerry Sutcliffe: The community amateur sports club scheme has, since its introduction in 2002, seen 4,380 clubs register and Deloitte estimates that that has saved more than £19.7 million for community sport through mandatory rate relief and gift aid. However, I believe that this represents a small percentage of the clubs that are eligible for CASC status and I encourage hon. Members and local authorities to publicise the benefits of the scheme as widely as possible.

Andy Reed: As my hon. Friend knows, I have taken a keen interest in the matter since I introduced my ten-minute Bill in 2000. The Government caved in two years later and included the provision in the Budget. It has been worth about £19 million, but is he aware—he hinted at this—that that probably involves only about 10 per cent. of the clubs that are eligible for the scheme? The form is probably one of the simplest that the Inland Revenue has ever produced. Will he work with local authorities, in particular—because they have the ability to push the message to sports clubs in their areas—to ensure that people know that there is a tax benefit, money is available and the process is easy to undertake? He should encourage everybody up and down the country to play their part. I encourage Members to try to write to every sports club in their area to achieve wider coverage.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for supporting the initiative. He started the whole thing off with a ten-minute Bill. That has resulted in support for community sport. He is quite right: we think that there are about 40,000 clubs that could get involved and they could see savings of £60 million. There is a leaflet available in the Department and I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will ask me for a copy. He is right that we need to speak to local authorities. My predecessor wrote to them, but we need to do that again. This is an opportunity for money to go back into sport very easily and quickly, and I hope that Members will support that.

Patrick Cormack: May I add my congratulations to the Minister and his colleagues? If he really wants to achieve what he has indicated that he wants to achieve, should he not talk to his colleague in charge of schools? What would do more than anything else to improve community sport throughout the country would be a restoration of the days when all schools had teams—many teams—and most schools had playing fields as well.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for welcoming me to my post. With your indulgence Mr. Speaker, I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), who was the longest-serving Minister for Sport and did a tremendous amount of work in that role. I am happy to do the job. There has never been a better time to be the Minister with responsibility for sports. May I put on record my congratulations to Mr. Padraig Harrington for winning the British Open yesterday? That was a tremendous feat.
	The hon. Gentleman is quite right: we need to develop competition in school sports and we are doing that through the investment of the £100 million. He is quite right that, as the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) said, that brings advantages such as team work. We have put in place a much more rigorous way of dealing with the sale of school playing fields. I am pleased that last year there was a net gain of 35 playing fields, so we have arrested the decline in numbers.

British Film Institute

David Taylor: If he will make a statement on the future of the British Film Institute's archive.

James Purnell: The Government are firmly committed to protecting and increasing access to the British Film Institute's archive. Of the £16 million a year that the BFI receives in grant in aid, it invests £6.2 million specifically in the archive.

David Taylor: After the Tory by-election candidate selection a few weeks ago turned into a Southall farce, we now find that the Ealing comedies and other films of that era may decay into dust for want of central finance to copy and conserve them. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is a real problem of paramount importance?

James Purnell: I certainly agree that the BFI archive is a national treasure. It is arguably the finest film and television archive anywhere in the world and I assure my hon. Friend that it is safe in our hands.

Gregory Campbell: Will the Secretary of State undertake to do what he can to ensure that films, particularly drama productions, depicting regions across the United Kingdom that receive funding from his Department continue to do so? Will he also ensure that they are not filmed in central Europe—that has been the experience of many companies in Northern Ireland—but in the regions that they depict?

James Purnell: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have recently introduced a new tax break to ensure that we can do exactly that. It is available both to people from Northern Ireland and to all the nations and regions in the country. It has been a great success for the film industry and for tourism, because it has attracted people to this country to visit the places that feature in our great films, so we are doing exactly what he suggests.

Tom Clarke: I welcome my right hon. Friend to one of the most exciting jobs in Government. Some of us who contributed to the document, "A Bigger Picture", which remains the most comprehensive review of the British film industry, and which supports the Film Council, still think that the British Film Institute has an important role, not least because of its responsibilities for preserving the film archives, which represent some of the best material, not only in Britain, but in the world.

James Purnell: That is right, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend's role in producing that policy document and in reforming support for the film industry in this country. That work has been a great success and that is to his credit. He is right to say that the archive needs to be supported and protected, but obviously we cannot make any announcements ahead of the spending review. It is right that we not only protect the archive, but modernise the way in which it is used. The BFI has introduced important proposals, such as proposals for ensuring that it is made available online, and I know that many schools are already using that facility all around the country. We need to protect what we have and ensure that there is wide access to it.

Sport England

Graham Allen: What discussions he has had with Sport England on the potential contribution of sport to community regeneration; and if he will make a statement.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I have had no discussions on that subject, although my predecessor and officials have had discussions with Sport England.
	Sport plays a key role in a number of areas of community social regeneration. Sports projects can have a significant impact by breaking down barriers and providing positive opportunities for people to mix with others. Sport can help reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and increase people's levels of trust and community involvement.

Graham Allen: Does the Minister think that Sport England should play a more mainstream role in regeneration and that it should build up our communities, and work together with other bodies on issues of health, crime reduction, and the education of our young people? Does he feel that its image, which is dominated by the blazerati who seem to corner a lot of the money at a national level, needs to be changed so that youngsters at a local level can enjoy sport not only for its own sake, but for the wider benefits that it brings through regeneration?

Gerry Sutcliffe: First, may I congratulate my hon. Friend, with whom I have played sport—cricket or football—on numerous occasions. I know his sporting prowess. He hits the nail on the head when he suggests ensuring that Sport England get involved in community regeneration. I know that he will shortly meet the chief executive of Sport England, Derek Mapp, to discuss what is going on in Nottinghamshire. He knows that the sports participation rate in Nottinghamshire is low, and I am pleased that he chairs the local strategic partnership to help develop and increase participation. Nobody knows better than I, a former Home Office Minister, the impact that sport can have on reducing reoffending and diverting people to other routes. I am sure that Sport England will take up the challenge, and I look forward to working with it and with my hon. Friend to deliver on participation.

Music Industry (Copyright)

Pete Wishart: What recent discussions he has had with the music industry on copyright term extension.

Margaret Hodge: As the Department for Culture, Media and Sport sponsors the creative industries, the music industry has raised the issue of the copyright term for sound recordings most recently in discussions that were held in the context of our creative economy programme. The policy responsibility for copyright issues, however, rests with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Pete Wishart: The Minister will be aware of the profound sense of disappointment in the music industry that musicians alone are not to receive the same type of copyright protection as other artists and creators in the creative economy. It also seems that the economic case for rejecting term extension has been blown out of the water by consultants LEGG, who conclude that term extension would be good not just for musicians, but for the industry and for the economy. I welcome the Minister and her team to the Dispatch Box. Will she do the right thing by UK musicians, look at term extension again and ensure that our musicians get the same protection as other artists and creators?

Margaret Hodge: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question and look forward in my new role to hearing him play in MP4. On the issue that he raises, the research evidence is extremely mixed. He knows that Gowers undertook a review, and the Europeans have undertaken a review from Hugenholtz. I am told that the Gowers review involved five Nobel prize winners and many well known academics. The important thing for the music industry is to ensure that in the changing environment in which it must survive, there are proper business models which will enable individual performers, composers and all those who are involved in the music industry to get a proper return for their creative investment in that industry. That is what I shall be turning my mind to, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in that exercise.

OLYMPICS

The Minister for the Olympics was asked—

Risk Management

Tom Brake: If she will make a statement on the progress of the monitoring and risk management arrangements for the 2012 Olympics.

Tessa Jowell: The Olympics is a risky project, by definition. It is the biggest public sector construction project in Europe and must be completed by the fixed deadline—on Friday, it will be five years to go until the opening ceremony—so risk management is a key part of the arrangements for delivering the 2012 games at every level of its operation. In developing the approaches to risk management, we have built on best practice from previous games—what to do and what not to do—and have looked at best practice in relation to other large projects. Staff are being recruited, particularly from terminal 5, to the delivery authority, the organising committee and the delivery partner.

Tom Brake: I welcome the Minister to her new role. The lack of strong progress monitoring and risk management arrangements identified in the Public Accounts Committee report presents a real risk to good causes which have already been hurt by the diversion of £1.7 billion worth of funding, a figure confirmed by the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. Can the Minister confirm that any future slippage will be funded from the contingency fund and not by further raids on Olympic legacy projects, such as participation in sports or the arts?

Tessa Jowell: I, too, welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new responsibilities, and suggest that before he makes claims about the National Audit Office report, he reads the report carefully. There is a clear recognition by the NAO report published at the end of last week of the scale of risk involved in the project. That is a statement of fact. Building a project of such a size to a fixed deadline is, by definition, risky. That is why we have put in place the means by which that risk is mitigated. The scale and effectiveness of risk management is one of the many reasons why the president of the International Olympic Committee recently said that we were further ahead in our planning than any other city has ever been.

Stephen Pound: To paraphrase earlier remarks, there has never been a better time to be a sports lover in this country, thanks in no small part to the exemplary work of my right hon. Friend. As we strain our ears towards the sound of the starting pistol in 2012, we must look at infrastructure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as is the case with any major construction project, the level of risk will reduce as the development of the Olympic park progresses? Will she give an update on progress on the Olympic venues?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, I am delighted to do that for my hon. Friend. Progress has been made on approving the design of the aquatic centre, and companies have been shortlisted to build it. Last week, we announced the design team, which will be led by Hopkins Architects, to build the velopark, which Chris Hoy, one of our gold medallists, has said he expects to be the finest velopark in the world. Planning for the Olympic stadium has moved to the next stage, and the Olympic Delivery Authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd for the development of the stadium. As everyone knows, McAlpine was responsible for, among other great projects, the magnificent new stadium at Arsenal.

Don Foster: I welcome the Minister to her role back at the Dispatch Box, and I also welcome the news about McAlpine. However, is there not a risk management issue? As one newspaper has put it:
	"Britain is facing a huge skills shortage that could undermine the success of the Olympics."
	We know that we need thousands more electricians, plumbers, bricklayers and many others. What progress is being made to implement the necessary training to ensure that we have sufficient people with the relevant skills, so that we are not later held to ransom by unscrupulous contractors?

Tessa Jowell: The right hon. Gentleman has identified an important point. One aspect of the legacy that we intend for the Olympic games, quite apart from the success in building the games on budget and to time, is to change that part of London, which is characterised by local people as having very low levels of skill and therefore high levels of unemployment. Local people will have skills as a result of the job opportunities created by the Olympics. A large number of initiatives are already under way, led by the Mayor and the Learning and Skills Council, in order to develop the skilled work force that the Olympics will require in every single respect, with a particular emphasis on increasing the skills of people through, for instance, the pre-volunteer programme. That will enable us to achieve two things: first, we will achieve a higher level of skill in east London; secondly, we will ensure that the skill match between people's skills when they look for work and the skills needed by the Olympics means that the Olympic park is constructed to budget and to time.

Andrew MacKinlay: The London-Tilbury-Southend line franchise of c2c terminates or is renewable before the Olympics. Will the Minister tell us what she intends to do to ensure that that line receives the appropriate investment to make it welcoming and to maximise mobility in and around the Olympics? What will happen?

Tessa Jowell: I am happy to examine the extent to which that line will serve the Olympic park. The Olympic park and the area around Stratford will benefit from an unprecedented level of investment in new transport infrastructure, with 10 new rail services and other public transport links, including, of course, the channel tunnel rail link, which will be an important part of the infrastructure. Much of that major investment is specifically because of the Olympic games, and I will write to my hon. Friend about the point that he has raised.

Departmental Reorganisation

Shailesh Vara: How she expects the recent departmental reorganisation to affect the delivery of London 2012; and if she will make a statement.

Tessa Jowell: As I have said, with five years to go, the Olympic programme now moves into the next phase of delivery. It will require intense ministerial oversight and scrutiny of the building programme, as well as an increased focus to ensure that the resources of the whole of Government are mobilised and focused on delivering on the five legacy promises that were announced last month. These games are arguably the most ambitious in terms of legacy—a point commented on by the International Olympic Committee, which said that the legacy ambition of the London Olympics would serve as a model for future games. That is why it is important to have a dedicated Minister for the Olympics and why I am delighted to be that Minister.

Shailesh Vara: I congratulate the Minister on her new appointment and thank her for her kind reply. A recent Public Accounts Committee report said that it was important that her Department had a plan of
	"what needs to be decided, when and by whom."
	Does she share the concern of many people that the reorganisation in her Department has blurred the lines of responsibility, and what does she propose to do to allay those fears?

Tessa Jowell: I do not accept the fears that lie behind a perfectly legitimate question. The important thing is to set out clearly the facts and how the divisions of responsibilities will work. I am responsible in Government for the Olympic games. There is a large level of public investment—62 per cent. of the overall provided-for budget will come from the Exchequer—and it is important that that is properly safeguarded. The division of responsibilities is clearly established and was set out last week in a written answer. We have very much followed the precedent of other successful cities in ensuring proper Government engagement at the proper level of ministerial oversight.

Nick Raynsford: First, I welcome my right hon. Friend to her renewed responsibility for the Olympics. Whatever the framework within the Department, which rightly has to oversee the project, it is crucial to recognise that she has, in the Olympic Delivery Authority and in the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, absolutely first-class teams of professionals who are well capable of delivering an exemplary Olympics. Will she ensure that they are allowed to get on with the job so that we are the success that most international commentators believe that we are, and will she not be swayed by the frankly unfocused and sometimes rather outdated criticisms that we hear from the Opposition and from certain quarters in this building?

Tessa Jowell: I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is entirely legitimate to question and challenge the progress of the Olympic games, but it would not be right for people to lack confidence in the team in place at the ODA, who are widely recognised as world class. Unlike many of the armchair commentators and more sceptical contributors to the debate, they have built towns and cities, whereas those armchair commentators have probably not even built a garden shed.

Hugh Robertson: I was about to start by welcoming the right hon. Lady back to her old job in the new Ministry. As she is aware, the Olympics enjoy cross-party support, and we wish her well. However, may I take her back to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara)? Could she explain to the House, very simply, why the Government think that it is more efficient to put the budget holders and civil servants in one Department and the Minister in another than to put them all in the same Department together?

Tessa Jowell: We think so for two reasons. First, realisation of legacy is absolutely critical to the wider responsibility of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and secondly, it is one of the aspects of the Olympic bid that defined our programme as being different and more ambitious, whether in relation to the scale of the cultural Olympiad or, as mentioned in earlier exchanges, the sporting legacy.
	It is not just a matter, as most countries recognise, of becoming a world-class sporting nation in terms of elite performance, but in terms of participation and of sport in schools. Those arrangements are within the custody and oversight of the DCMS, but there is a further aspect to the legacy ambition that relates to transport and other infrastructure. There are issues relating to security and the use of health services during the games. That dual reach—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must stop the Minister. Thank you.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMISSION

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission was asked—

Comptroller and Auditor General

David Taylor: What progress has been made in developing the new system for overseeing the expenses incurred by the Comptroller and Auditor General in the performance of his duties.

Edward Leigh: The Public Accounts Commission met on 11 July and agreed a system of oversight for expenses incurred by the Comptroller and Auditor General in the discharge of his functions. The new arrangements are set out in the Commission's 13th report.

David Taylor: While I and other Members from the east midlands were on a nightmare journey to Westminster via a Midland Mainline train with standing room only, and King's Cross-St. Pancras station was closed, the head of the National Audit Office was purring from home to work by chauffeur-driven car at the public expense, using a perk that is not even recorded in NAO accounts. Can the feisty Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee get a grip on this flagrant exploitation of the public purse by the Comptroller and Auditor General; otherwise, Sir John really will think that in this Government, there is one born every minute.

Edward Leigh: I do not think that those remarks do the hon. Gentleman, who is Parliamentarian, or should I say Back Bencher, of the year any credit. The fact is that Sir John Bourn has done an outstanding job in Parliament on behalf of the taxpayer for many years. It is also important that we preserve the independence of the National Audit Office. The car referred to by the hon. Gentleman is provided by the NAO for its work, and it is used by the Comptroller and Auditor General for that purpose. As he well knows, the Commission, in the light of recent public concern, has put a transparent system in place, by which an external auditor—the chairman of the NAO audit committee—will be briefed in advance on planned expenses. He will discuss them with the Comptroller and Auditor General, and if necessary, with the Chairman of the Commission. These expenses, in turn, can be discussed in public with the Commission. I believe that we have a transparent system.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

Stipends

Anne McIntosh: What the average stipend for clergymen in rural parishes was on 1 July (a) 1997 and (b) 2007; and if he will make a statement.

Stuart Bell: The average stipend for incumbents in rural and urban parishes alike was £14,510 at 1 July 1997, and is projected to stand at £21,060 at 1 July 2007. By way of a statement, we agree with the hon. Lady's view that parish churches and their congregations are at the heart of rural life. That is why we seek to appoint appropriately remunerated stipendiary priests where possible.

Anne McIntosh: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Has the average stipend kept up with the cost of living? Moreover, will he take away from this afternoon's exchange that we hold in the highest regard those rural clergymen who are serving a record number of parishes each Sunday? In times of crisis, such as the current flood emergency, and also during the recent BSE disaster, they work beyond the call of duty, which should be recognised.

Stuart Bell: The hon. Lady has often expressed her frustration at the difficulty that rural parishes sometimes have in attracting stipendiary priests. I commend her for continuing to put that point of view, and also for drawing the attention of the House to the work of priests in flood areas.
	In response to the hon. Lady's more technical question on the cost of living, I should point out that the national stipends benchmark for 2007-08 is £20,980. This was an increase of 2.5 per cent. on the previous year's benchmark, compared with a projected increase in average earnings of 4.3 per cent. for the year. As the hon. Lady will know, the stipend forms only part of the remuneration package of the parish priest.

Michael Jabez Foster: Does my hon. Friend believe that there should be a rate for the job in such appointments, and does he have any figures about whether female incumbents receive the same as male incumbents?

Stuart Bell: My hon. Friend may like to know that stipends are fixed each year by the Central Stipends Authority, after careful consideration with dioceses, and the figures reflect what the dioceses can afford. The idea is that stipends should be adequate to enable clergy to discharge their duties without financial anxiety, flexible enough to allow the Church to put clergy where they are best deployed, and equitable to avoid impeding clergy mobility. That applies to male and female clergy.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION COMMITTEE

The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission was asked—

Fixed-term Parliaments

Peter Bone: What recent discussions the Electoral Commission has held on fixed-term Parliaments.

Peter Viggers: The Electoral Commission advises me that it has not held any recent discussions on fixed-term Parliaments.

Peter Bone: That is rather disappointing. Former Prime Minister Blair promised the electorate in 2005 that if he was re-elected he would serve for a full term. The current Prime Minister has not called a general election, despite that promise. Would it not be appropriate to note that, with a fixed-term Parliament, that sort of political deception could not occur?

Peter Viggers: The Electoral Commission recognises that other elected bodies, including local government, the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly, are elected for fixed terms. However, the commission believes that the question whether fixed terms should be introduced for the House of Commons is a matter for the Government of the day, and, ultimately, Parliament, to decide. It would not be appropriate for me to reply on behalf of the Speaker's Committee to my hon. Friend's specific point.

David Heath: Many of us believe that the case for a fixed-term Parliament, rather than reliance on the whim of a Prime Minister, is unanswerable, but I doubt very much whether it is a matter for the Electoral Commission rather than the political system. There is, however, a desperate need for the Electoral Commission to be strengthened so that it can perform a much stronger regulatory and monitoring role. Is that transition to a stronger role now well in hand?

Peter Viggers: Yes, there has been change in emphasis in the Electoral Commission, which is reflected in the corporate plan for 2007-08, which was laid before the House of Commons in May 2007. The report stated
	"some areas of our work will assume less importance in terms of resource allocation in the future. Rather than taking a lead role in public policy development, we will contribute our expertise and experience to inform new legislation and offer independent evaluation of the Government's own policy initiatives."
	Thus there has been an evolution in the role of the commission.

Patrick Cormack: As the new Prime Minister has indicated that he would not want to go to the country without consulting Parliament—he made that very plain as one of his first utterances in the post—would it be appropriate for the commission to initiate a dialogue on the desirability of fixed terms, as there are many, on both sides of the House, who believe that they are a sensible solution?

Peter Viggers: The Electoral Commission does not believe that that is an appropriate matter for it to become involved in, but I have no doubt that the points made by my hon. Friend will have been heard at the commission, as indeed they will have been heard by the Government.

List Votes (Disregards)

Ian Lucas: What steps the Electoral Commission is taking to assess the effect on voter turnout of the disregarding of list votes cast for candidates elected in constituencies in the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.

Peter Viggers: The commission informs me that it is taking no such steps.

Ian Lucas: That is very unfortunate, because when I cast my vote for the Labour party in the north Wales regional list at the National Assembly elections, that vote has no consequence, as it is not counted; it does not result in the meaningful casting of a vote on my part. It is irrelevant for me to take the action of voting, and in my view the commission should look at the issue to decide whether there is a disincentive for individuals to vote. Is not that exactly what the Electoral Commission should look at?

Peter Viggers: The additional Member system was introduced, for the Welsh Assembly elections, the Scottish Parliament elections, and elections to the Greater London Authority, by Parliament at the initiative of the Government in 1999. It includes the D'Hondt system of alternative counting, on which I have made myself an expert in advance of the hon. Gentleman's question, but the commission takes the view that it would not be appropriate for it to make an assessment of the merits of different electoral systems. It believes that that is Parliament's role.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

Broadcasts

Mark Pritchard: What the policy of the Church Commissioners is on broadcasts from cathedrals and churches; and if he will make a statement.

Stuart Bell: The commissioners themselves do not have such a policy. However, by way of a statement, church buildings play a central part in the community and the Church welcomes the wide range of uses to which its buildings are put, as long as they are not contrary to its teaching and do not conflict with its mission.

Mark Pritchard: I understand that the General Synod debated the issue two years ago, but there is no agreed policy on how church buildings, particularly cathedrals, can and should be used for film making and other types of broadcasting. Given the recent controversies about the use of church buildings and places of worship, is it not time that the Synod set down an agreed policy?

Stuart Bell: The Synod has just met and will hold its next meeting later in the year. I shall be happy to put the hon. Gentleman's point to its representatives, but I am sure that he will agree that, whether on television, radio or the internet, regular broadcasts from churches and cathedrals allow a wider audience to keep in touch with one of the treasures of our national life, particularly at times of national joy or grief. Many come together through the broadcast of special services.

FLOODING

Hilary Benn: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the serious flooding that occurred over the weekend.
	A band of rain swept across central and southern England on Friday, developing into intense rainstorms. In 24 hours, up to 160 mm or 6&frac12; in of rain fell. With already saturated ground, this water rapidly entered rivers and drainage systems, overwhelming them. Transport was severely disrupted, with the M5 and M50 affected and train services unable to run. Many local roads remain closed and the public are advised not to travel in the worst-hit areas. The most serious flooding has been experienced across central England, particularly in Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. I must emphasise that the emergency is far from over. Further flooding is very likely, as the Thames and the Severn fill with flood waters from within their catchments. There are currently eight severe flood warnings in place, covering the Severn, the Thames and the Great Ouse in Bedford, while 50 other flood warnings are in place across England and Wales.
	We believe that up to 10,000 homes have been or could be flooded. Our thoughts are, of course, with all of those whose lives have been so badly affected by the floods. In addition, up to 150,000 properties in the area including Tewkesbury, Gloucester and Cheltenham have lost, or risk losing, mains water, following the flooding of the Mythe water treatment works at Tewkesbury. This loss of water supply is serious and we do not expect houses to have service restored for some days. Severn Trent, the water company, is making provision for some 900 bowsers to be deployed and refilled by tankers for those people without mains water. The company reports that about 240 bowsers are already in place, and priority is being given to hospitals and vulnerable customers. Precautionary notices to boil water have also been issued in Sutton, Surrey, following rain water getting into treated water storage.
	Electricity supply is also a concern. A number of local electricity sub-stations have been affected by flood water, and about 45,000 properties have lost power, including at Castle Mead and Tewkesbury. A major national grid switching station at Walham, Gloucester, remains under threat, which could result in 200,000 or more additional properties losing their supply. That would have a knock-on effect on water supplies. Yesterday evening, armed forces personnel were drafted in to help fire service and Environment Agency staff erect a kilometre-long temporary barrier around the site and start pumping out 18 in of flood water behind the barrier. So far those defences are holding, but the water is still rising, so it is touch and go. If the station does flood, the national grid will be used as far as possible, but properties in the affected area will lose power. Contingency planning is under way to ensure continuity of essential supplies and services.
	Last night, the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of COBR, and today he visited Gloucester. Other ministerial colleagues and I have also been to see the problems first hand, in my case visiting Worcester, Evesham and Gloucester yesterday. I am sure that the whole House will wish to thank the emergency services, the armed forces, staff from the Environment Agency, local councils and the utilities, and others for the way in which they have worked together in implementing the emergency plans. I would also like to thank the local communities for their huge effort in helping each other.
	Because this emergency continues, I would ask the public to listen out for flood warnings, particularly on local radio stations, to contact the Environment Agency flood line on 0845 9881188, to respond to advice about evacuation and, of course, to look out for neighbours and anyone who might be vulnerable as a result of flooding or the loss of their power and/or water supply. People should not go into flood water and children should certainly not play in it. Even 6 in of fast moving water can knock people off their feet, and the water will often be polluted or hide dangers.
	As the waters recede, the clear-up will begin. The revised Bellwin rules will assist local authorities in the areas affected to cover the immediate costs of dealing with the flooding and its aftermath, and the Government will now look at the further support required for these areas. We will also increase funding for flood defences to £800 million by 2010-11, as I informed the House on 2 July.
	Finally, the review that I have set up to learn the lessons from the floods of this summer will, of course, look at what has happened over the past three days. I have decided that I will ask an independent person to oversee the review. I will keep the House informed of developments.

Peter Ainsworth: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and join him in extending our sincere sympathy to the many thousands of people whose homes have been flooded, whose lives have been turned upside down, and whose business premises have been wrecked by the floods. People have had to endure miserable and frightening experiences such as being stuck in their cars overnight, waiting to be rescued from flooded buildings, or camping in temporary accommodation. And, as the Secretary of State said, the problems are not over yet. I also join him in paying tribute to the emergency services, including the Royal Air Force, the fire and ambulance services, local councils and all those who have worked tirelessly in very difficult circumstances to cope with those miserable events.
	I have said before that we are not interested in playing a blame game. The extreme weather events that led to the current floods, as well as to those in the north of England last month, are not the Government's fault. They are a humbling reminder of the awesome power of nature. What matters is that everything feasible that could be done to respond to the threat of flooding and to the flooding events themselves was done, is being done and will continue to be done.
	Is the Secretary of State satisfied that sufficient action was taken by the relevant bodies following the Met Office's severe weather warning, which was specific to the M4 and M5 corridors in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, last Wednesday? The Met Office deserves to be congratulated on this occasion for being absolutely spot-on, but did timely and helpful information filter down to the public in the areas concerned? Chief fire officers have commented on institutional confusion between the numerous agencies involved in dealing with floods. Does the Secretary of State agree that there needs to be a much clearer line of responsibility for flood prevention and tackling emergencies?
	Is the Secretary of State aware that, three years ago, the Government undertook to extend the powers of the Environment Agency to include flooding from drains and sewers by the end of 2006? Will he tell us what has happened to that initiative? There are reports that the Environment Agency was unable to install vital flood defences because they were stored too far away from where they were needed and got caught in the general chaos that made the roads impassable. Can the Secretary of State confirm that that was the case? If so, does he regard it as acceptable?
	Huge numbers of people are currently without mains access to fresh drinking water and power. Will the Secretary of State tell us what measures are being taken to ensure that vulnerable people are getting a fair share of access to bottled water? Will he comment on reports that Severn Trent has said that it may take a week or even two to restore fresh water supplies in the Tewkesbury area? Surely it must be possible to speed that up.
	I am grateful for the Secretary of State's remarks about the efforts to maintain the security of the Walham electricity sub-station. I understand that, were it to fail, it could plunge a further 600,000 or so people into darkness.
	Will the Secretary of State clarify who in Government has overall responsibility for dealing with this crisis? There were reports in the press at the weekend that the Prime Minister—it is good to see him in his place this afternoon—had personally taken control of the situation. Will the Secretary of State confirm that?
	On 2 July, I welcomed the announcement that spending on flood defences, which was cut last year, was to receive an extra £200 million in 2010-11; but is there not a case for making that extra money available now? Is there any good reason for the delay?
	As the Secretary of State knows, I have previously raised the issue of uninsured losses. I accept that it is still too early to make an accurate assessment of the scale of the problem and how it may affect small businesses and people on low incomes. However, one sector likely to be hard hit is farming. Tens of thousands of acres of arable crops such as wheat have been destroyed and crops like potatoes are rotting in the fields. What consideration has the right hon. Gentleman given to the financial losses to the farming sector and to their implications. I am pleased that the inquiry will be led by an independent person and I look forward to hearing more about it.
	Looking ahead, all the scientific evidence suggests that severe weather events are likely to continue increasing in frequency and ferocity. That is consistent with climate change.
	Will the Secretary of State hold urgent discussions with the Secretaries of State for Communities and Local Government and for Transport about the priority accorded by local authorities and the highways agencies towards the mundane but essential work of properly maintaining drains and culverts?
	While the right hon. Gentleman is talking to the Communities Secretary, will he raise the possibility of extending the Bellwin scheme to cover capital spending programmes arising from flood damage? Local authorities are understandably very anxious to obtain reassurance from the Government that the medium and long-term costs of reconstruction and repair will not fall only on their local residents. He might also point out to the Communities Secretary that although there is broad agreement that more affordable homes are needed, nobody will thank the Government for building homes that are subject to flooding and are uninsurable—least of all the people who move into them.
	Finally, all our thoughts are currently concentrated on relieving the plight of the victims of these dreadful floods and on preventing further disasters as the tide of water moves westward. We want to offer our support to the efforts of the Government and their agencies to deal with the imminent dangers, just as our local councils are working in close partnership with them on the ground. However, the Secretary of State will know that, once the waters recede and people begin the long process of rebuilding their lives, many searching and awkward questions about the adequacy of the systems in place in this country to deal with emergencies will remain to be answered.

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman both for his appreciation of the efforts made in response to this emergency and for the spirit in which he made his remarks. I would like to pick up the points that he raised.
	First, yes, the Met Office warning was pretty clear, but as the Gold Commander told me yesterday morning in Worcester, we do not know precisely which river catchment systems the rain will fall into until it actually happens. That certainly applied in respect of the M5 and the M50. We should bear it in mind that these are relatively new motorways, built to try and accommodate the removal of surface water. That shows one of the lessons that we have to reflect on as we design such roads in the future.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to institutional confusion, but I have to say that in all my discussions, including at meetings that I have chaired and talks with the Gold Commanders in Worcester and Gloucester, I have not found any institutional confusion at all. The system in place is the Gold Command system, which has complete oversight of what is required in the areas covered. The emergency response has included the evacuation of people, bringing supplies in and providing help and support—such as offering shelter even for some motorists who found themselves trapped because they could not travel on Friday evening. All of that happened precisely because of the arrangements that have been put in place.
	On the two barriers, it is the case that temporary barriers for Upton upon Severn and Worcester could not be deployed because of traffic congestion. In the case of the Upton upon Severn barrier, I am advised by the Environment Agency that even if it had been deployed, it would have been over-topped because of the weight of the water. In the case of Worcester, it would have protected about 30 homes. I accept that one of the lessons that needs to be learned is that if there are temporary barriers, they ought to be stored in a place that will enable them to be put up quickly. I will take that thought away with me.
	The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point on the availability of water supplies. Local authorities, together with the water company and, indeed, the general public, all have a part to play in ensuring that everybody who requires water will have it made available to them. On the Mythe water treatment works, I have asked the very question that the hon. Gentleman put to me of the chief executive of the Severn Trent company when I spoke to him late yesterday evening. I have said that we will give any assistance that he requires to get access to the Mythe water treatment plant once the water level falls so that the work of repairing it can happen.
	On the Environment Agency, there has been, as the hon. Gentleman knows because we discussed this last time, no cut to the capital budget. Some feasibility studies were held back for a bit because of the reduction in the budget, but that has been made up this year. It has had no effect at all on the response to the flooding over the past month. The additional funding that I announced to the House will come on stream. The precise details will be announced once the comprehensive spending comes out. It will have to take account of the fact that as those feasibility studies come in place, there will be a programme of capital works that the Environment Agency itself will want to fund.
	I am acutely conscious of the distress caused not only to members of the public because of what has happened to their houses and businesses, but to farmers. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the steps that I have already taken to lift the restriction on accessing water-logged land, which applies until the end of this month—I will review it in light of the current weather conditions—and to enable farmers to ask for access to set-aside land for grazing or foraging in the light of the damage caused to their crops, although many of them are still under water.
	As for looking ahead, the whole question of surface water drainage is a big one. The truth is that we are dealing with a system that has been in place for more than 150 years, and the surface water drainage system was not designed to cope with the unprecedented rainfall that we have been seeing. The most important lesson we can learn is that as we build from now on in we ensure that drainage can accommodate the flow of water that we currently see.
	As for the Bellwin rules, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that they were extended in response to the flooding that took place at the end of June. Those extensions were applied by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on Saturday to the local authorities affected. Capital work—repairs to possible damage to bridges and other structures—will be a matter for the individual Departments that are responsible for agreeing capital funding and approvals to discuss with the relevant local authorities.
	Finally, a lot of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised and the questions that I and others have got about what can be done better in future will be picked up by the review. I am grateful to him for welcoming the fact that an independent person will oversee it.

Christopher Huhne: We also wish to express our sympathy to all of those affected by the floods. They are severe and there has been an enormous amount of hardship caused for many, many people. We also wish to join in the congratulations offered to the emergency services and, indeed, to join in the pride that the House should rightly feel in their dedication and devotion to duty.
	An independent review of the lessons to be learned from these events is surely welcome. Will the Secretary of State also confirm that he intends to proceed with the strategic overview for the Environment Agency of all flood risks, which the Government announced in March 2005? There is a confusion between what has been a good set of co-ordinated responses through Gold Command by the emergency services and the much less clear response of the agencies responsible for the prevention, forecasting and warning of flooding. After all, that commitment in March 2005 was before the revolving ministerial door in the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs took its toll. Ministers should now proceed with this.
	Is it not crazy that the responsibility for preventing floods and for protecting us against flooding remains split between councils, water companies, the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, all of which operate on different assessments of risk? Perhaps the Secretary of State will clarify that point.
	Drainage is assessed as adequate when it deals with one-in-10-years events; river flood defences are expected to be proof against one-in-100-years events. When will the Department insist that those be brought into line, while, we hope, clearly taking account of what is happening because of climate change? When will the Department ensure that there is a proper map of drainage and sewerage systems that are poorly maintained or otherwise inadequate?
	It is already clear that official assessments of river flooding are now woefully behind reality. For example, the new £23 million flood defence on the River Chelt at Cheltenham was meant to be proof against events once in every hundred years, yet it has been over-topped not once but twice in three weeks. On that reckoning, either the Environment Agency has to redo its sums or Cheltenham need not expect another flood for 200 years. Will the Secretary of State now review all existing provisions and future ones as, clearly, the greater likelihood of flooding means that many more schemes will pass the Government's investment threshold?
	The Prime Minister, whom I am delighted to see in his place, has to take particular responsibility for the Government's flood failures, as he was the person who cut the flood defence budget by £14 million last summer. There is no point in saying that the capital budget was not affected; those are weasel words. The truth is that the overall flood defence budget was cut and effecting feasibility studies meant that capital projects are likely to be delayed. If he doubts that, I suggest he talks to some of the people involved with the flood board in Yorkshire and Humberside.
	The local flood boards were asked only last month to plan for real-terms cuts for the next three years. Even after the Yorkshire floods, the Treasury conceded only that the flood defence budget should be boosted in 2010—as the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) said—while saying nothing about the next two years of the spending plans.
	I heard the Secretary of State say that we should wait for the comprehensive spending review, but surely the urgency of the situation demands that we get some clarity about the Government's intentions earlier than that. Is it not time that the Government recognised the urgency of the threat posed by climate change?

Hilary Benn: On the last point, the Government certainly realise the scale of the threat from climate change. One cannot attribute a particular incident to climate change, but it is clear that the climate is changing and that human activity is causing that. We are likely, the scientists tell us, to see extreme weather events with greater frequency. We are talking about a huge excess of water here; in other parts of the world, there are droughts. That is the future with which the whole world must deal.
	On the strategic overview, I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that the sensible course of action is to reflect on that in light of the review that will be undertaken, which will need to look at a number of the points that he raised, of which I am aware. On the different bodies that are responsible for drainage systems, it is surely right and proper that each body that maintains the asset should have the responsibility of ensuring that it is in an appropriate condition. We must ensure that we look at how all the different pieces connect because surface water drainage may be the responsibility of the Highways Agency, the local authority or some private landowner. We will have to reflect on that as part of the review.
	On the over-topping of the defences, even the best defences have been over-topped. As we speak, the new defences at Gloucester Quay, built some years ago, are about 4 in away from being over-topped. Everyone is waiting anxiously to see whether the peak will be reached without breaching that defence or not, but that is the result of investment that has already been made. There are new defences at Kidderminster, Newport Pagnell and Towcester and the new Jubilee river has been brought into play. It is, in effect, a flood relief bypass for Maidenhead in particular. It has not stopped all flooding in Maidenhead, but it has resulted in some pressure being taken off the Thames.
	On the flood defence budget, I simply say that it was £300 million a year about a decade ago, that it has risen to £600 million and that it will rise further to £800 million. Le me also repeat that what happened to last year's Environment Agency budget has not affected the capacity of the EA or the defences to deal with the current flooding. The money was restored and, as I told the House two weeks ago, we will significantly increase it. We need to do that because of the weather that we now have to deal with.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am mindful that many Members wish to contribute, but I am also aware that there are two further statements to follow and the main business of the House. I therefore request that Members ask only one supplementary question. If they are also answered briefly, more Members will be able to ask questions.

David Drew: May I first thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for visiting Gloucestershire? I also pay due regard to the emergency services, and to my neighbours in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham who have obviously suffered more than I have in Stroud—although my visits over the weekend to properties made it clear to me that the situation in general is miserable.
	On local co-ordination, it is a nice idea that we can rely on amateurs to open sluice gates and people to take seriously their riparian ownership, but it takes only one failure for the entire system to go wrong. I ask my right hon. Friend to look into that matter, and the operation of inland drainage boards. We could learn lessons from such investigations, and improve the effective, speedy, local action that is required in circumstances such as those we face.

Hilary Benn: I am very happy to be able to say to my hon. Friend that that is one of the issues that the review will look into.

Laurence Robertson: Although the Prime Minister has just left the Chamber, I wish to thank him for visiting the affected area this morning and to say that I entirely agree with his conclusion that we need to update the infrastructure. We also need to stop building houses on or near floodplains and to ensure that drains are clear and that emergency measures can be undertaken rather more quickly than they were on this occasion.
	Will the Secretary of State join me in paying tribute to the people of Tewkesbury for showing great strength during this terrible time? My constituency has been absolutely devastated. Only yesterday I personally helped people in wheelchairs leave their flooded flats—some properties might not have been given the right priority. Questions on such matters are perhaps for the future, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the most pressing task is to ensure that there is no loss of life and no injuries, and will he make sure that agencies have all the resources they need?

Hilary Benn: I certainly join in the hon. Gentleman's thanks to all his constituents for their efforts and his expressions of sympathy to all who have been so badly affected. I know that this is a difficult time. From the beginning of the crisis, I have said to everyone I have met who is in charge of the emergency response that they should let us know of any further resources that they might need. I also ask the hon. Gentleman and all other Members—I met some on Saturday evening—to contact me about all relevant circumstances or events in their constituency because I want to make sure that every support is given.
	In terms of floodplains, there will be an announcement on housing development to follow, but let me say that we strengthened in 2001 and then again, and more significantly, in 2006 the advice on that through the planning policy statement. It is clear that local authorities must now take into account flood risk in taking decisions on planning applications and the EA now has a statutory right to be consulted—it is the expert on flood risk and it will express its view.

Andrew Smith: I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. The situation in Oxfordshire is very serious, and in Oxford it threatens to get worse as the Thames rises. Will he take note that the message I received from elderly evacuees at the Oxford United stadium reception centre, and from others I spoke to on my visit, is that the emergency response in Oxfordshire has been very effectively co-ordinated by the county's emergency planning officer, the statutory agencies and volunteers, and moreover that the steps being taken are reassuring people who are desperately worried?
	My right hon. Friend mentioned a review. I welcome the fact that it will be independent. Will he give the House some idea of the time scale it will work to, as it is important that the right lessons are learned?

Hilary Benn: I am glad to hear that from my right hon. Friend's perspective the emergency response has been so effective. That does show the benefits of the planning that has been put in place and the structures that are operational. I hope that an initial report from the review will be available by the end of the year. The emergency phase comes first, and then looking at some of the longer term lessons from the clean-up. It is important, however, that we have a first look as quickly as possible, and that is what I will ask the independent person to do.

Michael Spicer: What is the point of having flood defences that are not used when they are most needed? That was certainly the case at Upton upon Severn, despite what the Secretary of State says—and much to the distress of my constituents who are still stranded there now. Will he ensure that the Upton mistakes are part of the remit of the independent review that he has announced?

Hilary Benn: As I have already said to the hon. Gentleman, the Environment Agency very much regrets that in those two cases it was not able to get the temporary barriers through, although—as he heard me say a moment ago—even if they had been erected, the advice I have had from the agency is that it would not have made any difference, because they would have been over-topped in any case. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point: if there are temporary barriers, it is important that they are capable of being put up. I undertake that we will look at the situation to ensure that that does not happen again.

David Kidney: When natural disasters of the severity that we have witnessed over the past few weeks occur in other parts of the world, the British public are extraordinarily generous in their offers of help. Can my right hon. Friend say if he is aware of arrangements to receive and harness offers of help from the British public, and will he give some consideration as to how the Government can encourage and support individuals and organisations to offer money, time and even temporary accommodation to people at this difficult time, in addition to whatever insurers and the Government are doing?

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the natural human response when other human beings are in trouble, which is to extend a helping hand. In the case of the flooding that we saw in Yorkshire and Humberside, several funds were established to provide support to those who lost everything. It is early days in the present case, but I am sure that local communities will want to take the same sort of initiative to provide support to people who have lost a great deal. We would encourage them to do so.
	As for physical assistance, one of the benefits of the planning that has been put in place is the way in which emergency services from other parts of the country have come in. I talked to fire crews and other crews, and the system works well, especially for boat rescue. One of the most impressive things that I saw yesterday was at the new fire control centre in Worcester, which is co-ordinating the boat rescue facilities from around the country, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other fire and rescue services, to deploy them where needed to bring succour and support to people who have suffered so much.

Peter Luff: I thank the Secretary of State for his visit yesterday to my constituents in Evesham, a town that has had its second dramatic flooding event in only nine years, and for enabling me to join him in his visit to Gold Command at Hindlip hall in Worcestershire. We were able to discuss issues of mutual concern and to congratulate the emergency services on the remarkable job that they have done in Worcestershire. I join him in saying that the co-ordination in the county was outstanding. However, the rain of course fell on the boundary of two if not three Government regions, and we also heard concern expressed about a problem with cross-regional co-operation. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the independent review will take proper account of the cross-regional issues, which could make a big difference to future flooding events?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and for the time that he spent yesterday morning, in addition to all the work that he and many other right hon. and hon. Members have done to support their constituents. He raises an important point, and, as part of the process, some of the new national arrangements have come into place. However, we need to ensure that if an emergency falls in an area that does not fit neatly in Government office regions or the Gold Command structures, the right people meet together to make things happen. That is another lesson that we need to learn.

Anne Snelgrove: Will my right hon. Friend take into account the experience of the residents of Moresby close in Swindon, whose homes first flooded in 2004? Ever since my election, I have been working with them to try to get Thames Water, the local council and the Environment Agency to work together to find a solution to the problem of the culvert that frequently floods their houses. Together, we helplessly watched sewage bubble up through the drains and lap at their garages on Friday. It was not pleasant, and solving this problem has taken too long. Can my right hon. Friend ensure that the independent review makes the agencies work together faster?

Hilary Benn: I cannot promise that the independent review will look at each individual case of flooding risk in that way, but as I indicated in answer to an earlier question, it will look at the broader point of ensuring that there is a co-ordinated overview of what the different agencies need to do.

Michael Jack: On 16 September 2004, as the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), will recall, the Select Committee requested a White Paper from the Government giving details of how they would deal with the type of extreme event and flooding that we have now experienced. In the light of the non-appearance of that White Paper, may I ask the Secretary of State to ensure that when the independent review reports and the Government make their response, that response has the status of a White Paper?

Hilary Benn: I will reflect on the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises. What I am most interested in, and what I know that he is most interested in, is ensuring that the lessons, once learned, are applied so that we can deal even more effectively with such emergencies in future. Certainly, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has helped to put in place arrangements that several hon. Members have said are working quite well, and we have to ensure that we get on and make the right things happen once we know what we can do better in future.

Martin Salter: My constituency is about to be flooded for the second time in four days. On Friday there were serious problems with surface water flooding, as the drainage culverts simply lacked the capacity to cope with the increased volumes of water. Tonight, the Thames in Berkshire will burst its banks, causing misery for hundreds of families. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the drainage systems are upgraded to increase capacity and that more money is spent on flood defences where they can make a difference?

Hilary Benn: As my hon. Friend will have heard, we certainly will be spending more money on flood defence. Let me also say that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw), is going to visit Reading tomorrow. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) raises an important point about surface water. In part, the problem is a consequence of the fact that more land has been tarmacked over and paved over, so there is nowhere for the water to go when there is flash flooding. That is a lesson that all those with responsibility for surface drainage have to take on board.

Martin Horwood: May I also congratulate the emergency services and everyone from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Gold Command and even BBC Radio Gloucestershire for their contribution to making the crisis in Gloucestershire less serious than it would have been? I also thank the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister for the personal interest that they have shown. However, may I ask the Secretary of State to ask the Environment Agency to extend its inquiry to the June floods in Cheltenham? May I also ask him to include in his own review some examination of why so much damage was done in Cheltenham in areas of relatively high ground close to culverts and drains? In one case, a stream that was normally a few inches deep rose 15 ft and inundated nearby homes.

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his words, and for his thanks. I will ask the Environment Agency, in reflecting on those lessons, to respond both to me and to him.

Clive Betts: In Sheffield we had our floods three weeks ago, and one of the sites that I visited at the invitation of National Grid was the Neepsend transformer station, which was flooded, leaving several thousands of homes without electricity on a rotational basis. Furthermore, if the Ulley dam had burst its banks, the Brinsworth transformer station could have gone down, which would have left whole sections of Sheffield and Rotherham without electricity for several days. Could I have an assurance that the Secretary of State will ask the review to look at the vulnerability of our electricity supply system and the lack of back-up when a transformer system goes down?

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend makes a really important point. One thing that is very clear as a result of these recent events is just how vulnerable is the ecosystem of utility services—if I may use that phrase. One bit goes out, and there is a knock-on consequence; the power goes, and it is not possible to pump the water. By definition, water treatment plants need to be by a river because that is where they get the water from. The Mythe plant has not flooded before, as far as I am aware—I asked the chief executive about that last night. The plant is raised on the side of the river, but, even there it was overwhelmed. Looking at what arrangements are in place in future to ensure that utilities can be protected from this kind of event will be an important part of the review.

John Maples: In the cost-benefit analysis of flood defence work, one of the crucial factors is, quite rightly, the probability of a flood taking place. In my constituency we have had two "one-in-30-years" floods in the past nine years, and that is common, certainly in the west midlands. I wonder whether the Secretary of State can assure us that in his review, that formula will be reconsidered, because projects that did not look viable on a one-in-30-years basis may well have a very considerable positive value on a one-in-10-years basis.

Hilary Benn: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that I should be very content to ask the review to look at that very question.

Andrew MacKinlay: May I look ahead some hours and days, and ask what is the prognosis for managing the build-up of water in the Thames as it comes through areas such as Runnymede, Spelthorne and Elmbridge, hits Teddington and goes beyond that into the tidal area of the Thames, past this building and into my own area on the Thames estuary? Can we have some reassurance that those waters can and will be managed, and if not, what is being done to alert the various authorities, both in the non-tidal Thames and in my area of Essex and opposite in Kent?

Hilary Benn: Clearly, those managing the watercourses, the river and the defences in place will do their best to ensure that flooding is minimised. Clearly, the existence of the Thames barrier, which protects a large part of London which is, of course, built on a floodplain, will also help. Below the Thames barrier things are more difficult. Further up, one of the things that the Thames barrier could do is to close up to allow some further relief for the water to pass down the system, to try to take the pressure off the Thames in its upper reaches.

Bill Wiggin: In Herefordshire, particularly, and in Worcestershire, these summer floods are the worst in living memory. My own car was flooded, and I had to carry my daughter to safety on my shoulders through chest-deep water. The Secretary of State asks for suggestions about what could be done. The people of Tenbury Wells in my constituency have been flooded three times, twice in the past week. I do not know what the answer is for them, but I do know that he can look again at his plans for the single farm payment, because the fields that are flooded were full of crops, and if he could get at least 80 per cent. to the farming community before Christmas, he would have a tremendous impact on what is going to happen to the rural community.

Hilary Benn: I understand. I am sorry to hear about the personal circumstances that the hon. Gentleman, like many members of the public, found himself in. With the single farm payment, because of what has happened in the past, as he will be aware, what I am most anxious to do is to ensure that the targets that we have set are met. The worst thing would be to set targets that might not be achieved. But I have said that in the autumn, as we see what further progress is being made by the Rural Payments Agency, we will look into whether further targets can be set, but I do not want to do that until I can review the situation.
	May I take this opportunity, since I know how many Members, particularly Opposition Members, have been affected, to express my thanks to the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) for the very considerable assistance that was given over the weekend to enable myself and my ministerial colleagues to contact right hon. and hon. Members?

Jim Dobbin: My constituency is not a floodplain, but it has recently experienced two very serious flash-flooding episodes. My right hon. Friend has said that existing drainage systems will be looked at. Will he also insist that those undertaking the review plead with local authority planning departments to regulate properly new developments that link into the existing drainage systems, and please ask them to clean their grids more regularly?

Hilary Benn: The whole House would agree with the points that my hon. Friend makes, particularly the last one: it is important that drainage systems be properly maintained, because they can become blocked, which affects the flow of water. First, it certainly is the responsibility of local authorities to ensure that when they give permission for new developments, the flood risk is assessed, as I have already described to the House. Secondly, it is clear that in future all local authorities will have to think about whether the current design standards for surface water drainage are adequate.

Paul Burstow: The Secretary of State referred to the "precautionary boil" notices that have been issued in my constituency. The incident that he referred to took place on Friday, as a result of the flooding of the Cheam treatment plant, and it took 24 hours before a decision was made to issue that "precautionary boil" notice, and a further 24 hours before the message was fully and finally received by all my constituents. Will his review look carefully and closely at what can be done to speed up the decision-making process, not least because by the time that the message finally went out to my constituents, most of the water that could have been contaminated would already have been drunk?

Hilary Benn: Without waiting for the review, I undertake to go away and ask precisely the question the hon. Gentleman has put to me about why there was a passage of time before the information was made available to members of the public. I shall respond to him directly.

John Redwood: Will the Secretary of State look at why several recent developments of homes in my constituency have been flooded, and will he ask why the Environment Agency did not insist on more adequate drainage and ditches when the developments were being put in place, to protect new owners from that terrible shock?

Hilary Benn: As the right hon. Gentleman will have heard in answer to an earlier question, we have now given the Environment Agency a much stronger position in the process by requiring it to be statutorily consulted when new planning applications come in. We have tightened the planning guidance—both in 2001 and in 2006—by further strengthening it to make it clear to local authorities that in the end, the planning authority has the responsibility for ensuring that it has weighed up all the risks before deciding to give planning permission.

Andrew Robathan: I am sure that the whole House would like to pay tribute and give thanks to the armed forces, which yet again, at very short notice, have come to the assistance of the civil authorities in an emergency. Sadly, there are far fewer members of the armed forces—both Regular and Territorial—than there were 10 years ago, as a direct result of the policies of the Government and the Prime Minister in cutting the defence budget. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what the units deployed on Friday and Saturday were doing beforehand? Were they on leave—either weekend leave, or leave following a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan? How many were in training for those deadly war zones, to which they may be going soon?

Hilary Benn: I do not have the information in relation to the forces, but the hon. Gentleman will have seen, as I did, the pictures of the RAF helicopters lifting people to safety—and Army personnel were heavily involved in the rescue operation at the Walham national grid switching station. I will endeavour to find out the information and provide it to him. I join him in paying tribute to the astonishing professionalism, bravery and skill of our armed forces.

Edward Vaizey: My constituency, too, has been hit hard by the floods. Will the Secretary of State ask the independent review to look into whether it is possible to give the Environment Agency a power of veto over proposed developments on the floodplain?

Hilary Benn: Although the review is going to look into many things—some of which we have added in the course of these questions—I do not think that the whole future of our planning policy ought to be part of that. It should be recognised that we have already given the Environment Agency a strong position in the process, and that ultimately, the Secretary of State has the power to call in proposals, having regard to the advice that the Environment Agency gives.

Philip Dunne: Some unfortunate households in the Ludlow constituency have been flooded twice, and a small number three times, in the past month. The Secretary of State talked about the Bellwin formula being extended from two to six months, which is welcome. I want to ask him about some significant pieces of public infrastructure, such as the bridge at Ludlow, which has had its span doubled in width as a result of the flow of water. That is going to involve a significant engineering redesign, not just a simple repair, and the current estimate for completion is 12 months. That falls outside the six months. Can he confirm to the House today that it will be covered?

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, but engineering and bridge works, of whatever nature, fall outwith the Bellwin rules, because those rules cover the immediate emergency clear-up costs. We have extended the time in which local authorities can make claims, because we recognise that the clear-up itself may take quite some time. The issue that he raised would be picked up in the normal discussions between the relevant department and the local authority. If it is a road that the Highways Agency has an interest in— [ Interruption. ] It is not. Well, it would need to be picked up by the existing systems.

Tim Boswell: Ahead of the main review, will the Secretary of State undertake to sit down with the farming community and others to look at the possibility of relatively short-term improvements in our water storage capacity—involving, for example, balancing ponds, storage reservoirs and even possibly the planned, as opposed to the recent catastrophic, reversion of arable land to floodplain grassland?

Hilary Benn: I would be happy to meet representatives of the farming community to discuss those issues, because I am acutely conscious of the difficulties that farmers will face, which have already been raised. The farming community can make a contribution, as we recognise that one of the places where water can go is away from built-up areas, but that can have knock-on consequences on crops that have been planted.

John Hemming: In the second world war people were evacuated from Birmingham to south Worcester and Gloucestershire. We now face a situation in which things may get substantially worse and people may lose access to electricity and water. Emergency planning in Birmingham has considered whether we can evacuate people from Gloucestershire to Birmingham, and we are willing to help. The health of some people may depend on their having access to water and mains electricity. Will the Secretary of State ensure that there is contingency planning, so that if it is likely that people will lose access to water and electricity, they are evacuated to where it is safe, whether that is Birmingham, Bristol or elsewhere—somewhere where they can access clean water and electricity to maintain their health?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he draws attention to the willingness of authorities that have not been affected, and the people who work for them, to extend a helping hand. Contingency planning is already taking place, but I hope that it will not come to that, and that the Walham electricity plant can be protected. However, those with responsibility for managing this emergency are looking at what may need to be done if the worst happens.

Mark Harper: The Secretary of State mentioned the Walham national grid switching station, and I support what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) said. Recent events have highlighted the critical needs of our infrastructure with regard to both electricity and water, and the fact that we are vulnerable at certain pinchpoints. We are not vulnerable to weather-related events alone; I am sure that the criticality of our infrastructure needs cannot have escaped the attentions of those who would do us harm. It is probably outside the scope of the independent review, but the Government should review our national infrastructure as a matter of urgency, to establish how vulnerable we are to all sorts of threats, as this event has highlighted may be the case.

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman is right, and that is why the utility companies are part of the resilience forum structure. But, yes, we need to consider what more can be done to protect crucial parts of our infrastructure from rain, water and flooding.

Richard Benyon: Will the Secretary of State's independent review assess the impact of infill development on our communities? Most of the flooding in my constituency was caused not by rivers overflowing but by the impact of water skating off the roofs and tarmac of houses built inside the façade of Edwardian and Victorian housing, whose drainage is not simply good enough to cope.

Hilary Benn: Yes, it will.

James Gray: Two detailed points arise from the experience in Wootton Bassett in my constituency, where homes were flooded in Westbury Park. Wiltshire was badly affected, although not quite as badly as Gloucestershire. My first question is about the planning permission that has already been granted for building not only on floodplains but on the flood reservoir in Wootton Bassett. That would be a catastrophe if it went ahead. How on earth can we reverse outline planning permission that has already been given? Secondly, one of the bodies—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has already asked one question.

Hilary Benn: I am not aware of the precise details of the case that the hon. Gentleman has raised, but perhaps he would like to write to me with further details—although the matter probably falls within the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point: people who give planning permission in future should reflect on the consequences of what they have given permission for.

Michael Gove: The Secretary of State will be aware that the Environment Agency offices for the whole of the Thames basin are based in Swift house in Frimley, in my constituency. I wrote to the Secretary of State's predecessor in April to point out that following cuts to his Department's budget, seven staff members had been let go in the previous 12 months. Many of my constituents who have been flooded out of their homes for the second time in a year will be asking why, at a time of acute climate change, the Environment Agency is laying off experts in flood management and defence.

Hilary Benn: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is advancing the argument that the events that he mentions have had an effect on the Environment Agency's capacity to respond to the current emergency. Like all parts of Government, the Environment Agency is having to look at using its resources as efficiently as possible. I seem to recollect that when the James review was published, it suggested considerable reductions in funding for the Environment Agency.

Anne Main: Further to the answer that the Secretary of State has just given my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), there is significant concern that adequate resources might not be given to the Environment Agency when it has the new duties of scrutiny of planning, The run-off that was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) needs detailed consideration in the planning system, not a nod through. Will commensurate resources and staffing be given to the Environment Agency to allow detailed scrutiny of planning in flood-prone areas?

Hilary Benn: I know from my discussions with Sir John Harman and Barbara Young of the Environment Agency how seriously they take the responsibility that they now have to comment on those planning applications under the new powers that we have given them, and am I sure—not least in the light of what we have experienced in the past month—that that is exactly what they will do.

HOUSING

Yvette Cooper: With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about housing supply. May I start by supporting the statement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and joining the many Members of the House who have expressed their sympathy to the thousands of families whose lives have been turned upside down by the unprecedented flooding affecting wide parts of the country.
	The Government are today publishing a housing Green Paper on affordable housing supply, setting out proposals to deliver the homes that Britain urgently needs today and for the future. The House should be proud of the huge steps forward that this country has taken in improving housing since 1997. There has been a two-thirds cut in rough sleeping, a £20 billion investment in social housing that has helped lift over a million children out of cold, poor or damp conditions, and economic stability that has given over a million more people the opportunity to become homeowners—but we also need to respond to new challenges.
	Demand for homes to buy or to rent is growing faster than supply, and homes are becoming less affordable as a result. Already many first-time buyers rely on the help of friends or family to get a foot on the ladder. It simply is not fair that their chance of owning their own home should depend so much on whether their parents or grandparents were homeowners before them. It is also not fair that children are still growing up in overcrowded or temporary accommodation, waiting for a settled home. Without further action, housing could become one of the greatest sources of social inequality in the next 20 years.
	In addition, we need to respond to the challenge of climate change. Our homes account for more than a quarter of national carbon emissions. We must provide greener, better designed housing for the future. As recent events have highlighted, it is vital to take steps to protect all our communities from flooding, and from the consequences of climate change in the future.
	In the face of these challenges, we propose strong action. First, we will build more homes to meet growing demand. The level of house building is at its highest for 17 years, but it is not enough. Moreover, without firm action there is no guarantee that growth will continue, as short-term market pressures mean that some developers have slowed starts this year. We believe that a total of 3 million new homes are needed by 2020, and we need to deliver 2 million of those by 2016. This must include new homes in the north as well as the south, as every region is seeing demand outstrip supply. In parts of the north we need additional affordable homes alongside areas of housing market renewal.
	Already locations for 1.6 million homes are identified in current regional plans, with up to a further 200,000 emerging in the new regional spatial strategies and in future revisions to them. This includes 650,000 homes in the growth areas such as the Thames Gateway and Milton Keynes. In addition, 45 towns and cities have already come forward with proposals for additional homes over the next 10 years in new growth points. Today we are inviting more councils to come forward to be new growth points, including, for the first time, councils in the north of England. We are also inviting bids for councils and developers to come forward with proposals for at least five new eco-towns.
	No one should be in any doubt about the historic scale of this vision. We are proposing the first new towns in 40 years, but with substantial improvements in environmental standards across the board. Further changes are needed to support the delivery of these homes. Providing enough land is vital, and councils need to identify 15 years' supply of appropriate land for housing, with continuing priority for sustainable brownfield land. We will not change the rules on strong greenbelt protection.
	We will introduce additional funding and incentives for councils and communities that are showing a lead in delivering growth through a new housing and planning delivery grant, a new £300 million community infrastructure fund and additional funding dedicated to high-growth areas.
	We are consulting on proposals to deter developers from seeking planning permission and then sitting on land without bringing forward new homes. We will also work across the Government to bring forward more brownfield land. I can announce that the Ministry of Defence has agreed to bring forward six sites with the potential for 7,000 homes, including sites at Aldershot and Chichester. The Department for Transport has also identified hundreds of potential sites for new homes.
	We will support local councils in setting up new local housing companies with partners to use their own land to build more homes. I can announce that 14 councils have already come forward to support that scheme. They estimate that in their areas alone they have the potential to deliver 35,000 homes on their land, with at least 17,500 of those homes being affordable homes. Better use also needs to be made of empty homes, including those left empty long-term by investors and speculators. Councils already have powers to take action, and we will look at the potential for additional incentives for them to do so.
	Secondly, although building more homes is crucial, they must also be better homes and more sustainable homes. In the 1960s, quality was sacrificed in the name of speed, and we must not make that mistake again. Today, our new homes must be part of well-designed and mixed communities with excellent local facilities, which means more family homes as well as parks and green spaces. With the urgent challenge of climate change, they must be greener homes built to the highest environmental standards.
	I confirm today that from 2016 all new homes will need to be zero carbon. We are the first country to set such an ambitious timetable, and I welcome the support of councils, green groups and developers across the country who have committed to working with us to make that happen.
	As well as helping to prevent climate change, we need to ensure that our homes are resilient to its consequences. Over centuries, many homes have been built in high-risk flood areas, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has set out immediate action to support the families suffering dreadfully from the extreme weather.
	Since 1997, we have progressively strengthened the rules on planning to protect homes from flooding, with much higher standards brought in last year. The new rules require councils to consult the Environment Agency, and where the Environment Agency says that the risk is too high and councils persist against that advice, we in government will be prepared to take over those decisions ourselves. We will also look further at what needs to be done to be ready for future challenges. Later this year, we will publish a new planning policy statement, which will require councils to plan more widely for the consequences of climate change.
	Thirdly, we believe that a decent home should be for the many and not only for the few. I can announce that we will invest £8 billion in increasing affordable housing over the next three years, a £3 billion increase compared with the previous spending review. That is on top of continuing investment in decent homes, including more than £2 billion on the arm's length management organisation programme over the next three years.
	We have listened to the evidence from Shelter and the National Housing Federation, which says that we need 70,000 affordable homes a year, of which 50,000 should be new social housing. I can announce that by 2010-11 we will deliver more than 70,000 new affordable homes a year. By 2010-11, we will deliver 45,000 new social homes a year with a goal of 50,000 homes in the next spending review. That is a 50 per cent. increase in new social housing over a three-year period, and it will more than double the amount of social housing in a six-year period. We will also deliver 25,000 new shared ownership homes through expanding existing programmes. In addition, we will look to support tens of thousands of additional shared ownership homes through public sector land and local housing companies, and we will set out further details later in the year.
	As rural areas face particular pressures, we will set a specific target for increasing affordable homes in rural areas later this year after consultation with the regional assemblies. We want to see more work by local councils, housing associations and the private sector to increase affordable housing both to buy and to rent. We are announcing today the first 10 arm's length management organisations—ALMOs—and local authority special venture vehicles approved to bid for social housing grant in order to build council homes. We are also consulting on changes to the rules on the treatment of rents and receipts from new homes, which would give councils more flexibility to build on their land, within responsible public finance rules.
	We also believe that first-time buyers need more flexible and competitive products. The Treasury is consulting on new ways to support more affordable long-term fixed-rate mortgages. We have also commissioned further work, led by Bryan Pomeroy, on expanding private sector shared equity products, and we will launch new shared equity products next year. In the meantime, we will, from today, offer a new 17.5 per cent. Government equity loan for key workers and other priority first-time buyers.
	Taken together, these proposals represent not just the most significant programme of house building for decades but an ambitious, positive response to the growing challenges that many people face in their day-to-day lives. To deliver, we will need a expanded skilled work force, and the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills will lead work to expand construction apprenticeships and work with partners in the sector to raise skills.
	We know there is no quick fix to the issues that we face: building more homes takes time. However, this must be a shared endeavour. Central Government are today setting a bolder framework for the future, but we will achieve our goals only if those at regional and local levels, in the public, private and third sectors, and in local communities, all play their part in supporting the homes we need. Building the sustainable homes needed by young people today and by future generations is a test of our commitment to supporting people's aspirations and to achieving social justice. I commend these proposals to the House.

Grant Shapps: I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of her statement, and I join her in expressing sympathies to all the thousands of victims of flooding in recent days.
	The last housing Green Paper in 2000 pledged to be the
	"first comprehensive review of housing for 23 years"
	and offered
	"action to help first time buyers"
	and "decent homes for all". That rhetoric has not exactly been matched by reality. Home ownership has fallen for the first time since records began, numbers of first-time buyers are at their lowest since 1980, housing waiting lists have grown by 60,000, and less social housing is being built every year under this Government than under the Major or the Thatcher Government. The Prime Minister's higher taxes have made it harder than ever to get on the housing ladder. The Minister cannot deny that the average first-time buyer now has to pay £1,500 in stamp duty, but is she also aware that the average first-time buyer in London pays £8,000 in stamp duty? Meanwhile, her own Department's research into the Conservative right-to-buy policy praises it as
	"one of the most successful housing policies in increasing owner occupation and creating mixed communities."
	However, right-to-buy discounts have continued to be squeezed. Will not her ongoing refusal to offer the right to buy to housing association tenants undermine her own goals of creating a greater social mix within communities?
	Today's Green Paper talks about 70,000 more affordable homes, but why should we trust the Government when their own social homebuy scheme, which is meant to help social tenants to get on to the housing ladder, is failing? On page 82 of the Green Paper, the Minister admits that of 1,400 housing associations, only 78 have offered the scheme. In April this year, she came to the House and told us that only 33 houses had been sold under the scheme. Perhaps she can give us an update today.
	We absolutely accept the need to build more houses. [Hon. Members: "Where?"] I will come to that in a moment. We will lend our cross-party support to measures that build sustainable eco-friendly communities on brownfield sites. We welcome the use of surplus public sector land. However, does the Minister accept that with the NHS in London already conducting estate audits with a view to closing hospitals and selling off land, the public will be worried that more homes will come only at the expense of fewer hospitals? Does she accept that her Government's policies of closing accident and emergency and maternity departments will in any case hinder sustainable growth of local communities?
	We heard last week that regional assemblies are to be sidelined, but is not criticism from regional assemblies the real reason why their powers are being seized? Page 30 of the Green Paper says that regional spatial strategies will be reviewed by 2011. Will the Minister promise the House that none of those regional plans will involve the deletion of green belt protection?
	In my constituency, we are running a campaign called "No Way To 10k"—in other words, no way to 10,000 houses. However— [ Interruption. ] Wait for it. We fully back the building of 6,000 houses, and have already undertaken to start building them. It is simply the case that 10,000 will overload our local infrastructure, at a time when the local hospital is being closed. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether the local Labour party is wrong to back my campaign.
	We are concerned that the Government's regional building targets are unsustainable. Has the Minister read the Roger Tym report, commissioned by her own Department, into increasing building targets in the south-east? It says that the Government's building plans will
	"have a negative impact on the character of the countryside"
	and the green belt. Trunk roads will be unable to cope, leading to congestion, pollution and soaring carbon dioxide emissions— [ Interruption. ] Labour Members may say, "Rubbish," but I am talking about the Government's own report. There will be increased
	"pressure to develop in these areas of flood risk",
	so we can expect more flash floods of the type that we have experienced in recent days and weeks.
	Yesterday, the BBC reported that the Green Paper stated that it is "not realistic" to prevent development taking place in areas at risk of flooding. Will the Minister confirm that that wording is no longer in the Green Paper, and how does that square with the 2005 agreement struck between insurers and the Government that areas at risk of flood will be insured only provided that the Government limit such developments?
	Labour is not planning the eco-towns of the 21st century; it is planning the sink estates of tomorrow. The Conservative party has been responsible for most of the progressive housing policies of the past 50 years. We built more social housing, spread home ownership and created mixed communities. Does the Minister agree that to solve the housing crisis, it is vital to end the ham-fisted nature of top-down, Whitehall-driven targets? Instead, we should switch to the empowering of local communities to build the homes that stand the test of time.

Yvette Cooper: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new post. I congratulate him on his appointment to the Conservative Front Bench, and his first appearance at the Dispatch Box. He was not here for our oral questions two weeks ago. We wondered where he was—and I understand that he was masterminding the by-election in Ealing, Southall. I congratulate him on that particular result, too. My guess is that some of his colleagues sitting behind him might wish he had taken his parliamentary responsibilities a little more seriously, and joined us in the House instead.
	I look forward to debating the issues with the hon. Gentleman; I know that he has a long-standing interest in housing. He referred to his "No Way To 10k" campaign against additional housing in Welwyn Hatfield. I am sorry that his new appointment has forced him to change his website. Before he took up his new post, two weeks ago, it read:
	"We believe you cannot build your way out of a housing crisis."
	He has deleted that since, and the website now says:
	"whilst building more properties is obviously vital".
	That is a rather rapid turnaround in one paragraph, in the space of just a couple of weeks.
	The hon. Gentleman raised a few points, and criticised our record. However, to have lifted 1 million children out of bad housing—cold and damp homes—through the decent homes programme is something of which the House should be proud, and of which his party should feel ashamed. His party left more than 1 million children in appalling housing by failing to deliver proper decent homes, and the council housing improvements that were needed.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the Association of British Insurers, which backs the new guidance that was introduced last year, with new, tougher requirements on flooding and planning for flooding He mentioned the Roger Tym report, which was commissioned to inform the planning process. The process needs to be properly informed if sensible decisions are to be taken.
	In the end, we must recognise a national collective responsibility to provide for the homes that the future needs. The hon. Gentleman gave us warm words. He said that his party accepted the need for more homes; but will he back 240,000 zero-carbon homes for 2016? Now, across the country, the LGA, house builders, councils and green groups back that target. The challenge for the Conservative party is to back their commitment; otherwise it will be letting down first-time buyers.

Paul Holmes: I thank the Minister for advance sight of the Green Paper, although as I had 55 minutes to read 128 pages I am sure that I will have missed some of the detailed nuances of policy. I have a few points on which I request clarification.
	I want, first, to welcome the intent of the Green Paper. At last, after 10 years, the Government recognise the scale of the housing crisis over which they have presided: with 71 per cent. home ownership—the highest rate in Europe—our market is under-supplied with land and houses and overheated in terms of demand and reckless mortgage lending. We approach the dangers of another wave of negative equity, such as we experienced in the '80s and early '90s. Mortgage debt is up 150 per cent., people are falling behind on mortgages at a rate double that of last year, and repossessions have trebled since last year. That is just the start: 2 million people on fixed-term mortgages with low interest rates will experience a hike in rates in the next 18 months. First-time buyers and key workers cannot get on to the housing ladder in 93 per cent. of urban areas. The Minister spoke of the highest rate of building for 17 years, but she failed to point out that that is from a record low base, with the 2001 rate one of the lowest on record.
	If the ownership crisis was due to Government neglect, the rented housing crisis is directly due to dogmatic Government policy. In the past 10 years, the Government have ended council house building and starved councils of funds, despite tenants' choice to stay with the council. Housing associations have managed to build only half the stock that is needed to replace right-to-buy losses, and only about a third of what the Barker review says is needed. The result is that waiting lists have soared from 1 million to 1.6 million.
	We welcome the Green Paper's proposed increases in social housing, but will the Minister confirm that despite all the media trailing by her and by the Prime Minister, the small print means more of the same for the 140 councils whose tenants have democratically chosen to stay with them? Will she confirm that the small print says that any extra money will go to housing associations and 60 arm's length management organisations, and that just a small number of councils will be able to launch partnerships with the private sector on the basis of special Government selection? Will she confirm that it is still proposed to rob the 140 councils that have retained their housing stock of 75 per cent. of right-to-buy money, and that most of those councils will lose up to an average of 25 per cent. of their council rents, whereas a housing association taking over that stock would be allowed to keep the entire sum? The housing and regeneration Bill is supposed to put tenants at the heart of social housing; why, then, in the Green Paper, is the Minister ignoring and punishing those very tenants for exercising their democratic choice to stay with the council as landlord?
	The Barker review said that 56,000 new social houses a year would be needed if we were to make any impact on the growing waiting list for social housing. Currently, housing associations have managed an average of about 25,000 houses a year. The Green Paper proposes an increase, by 2011, to only 45,000. Will the Minister explain such poverty of ambition after all the hype, in the face of desperate housing need?
	On sustainability—
	Hon. Members: Come on.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must be heard.

Paul Holmes: Will the Minister say why councils are not allowed to set higher environmental energy standards for private developments, as they are on affordable housing? That gives private developers an unfair financial advantage over affordable builders and produces fewer sustainable buildings. Why is the Government's aim for all new houses to be zero carbon by only 2016, when a target of 2011 is perfectly attainable in this country and has already been achieved in Germany?
	Finally, will the Minister explain why, despite all the talk at other times in recent weeks of restoring democracy and autonomy to local authorities, the Green Paper represents the imposition of yet more central control, with the Government dictating what houses will be built, where, by which councils and in partnership with whom? Why not simply restore autonomy to local authorities? Why not allow them to decide what they will build in their areas and get the benefit from that, and restore financial control to them?

Yvette Cooper: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not taken the opportunity to support the delivery of 240,000 zero-carbon homes by 2016, because it is important to increase housing in this country. He is missing the point on affordable housing. We have set out proposals for 70,000 affordable homes by 2010. That is a substantial increase in social housing and includes councils, too, being able to build homes. However, many areas will find it more cost-effective to do that in partnership with housing associations or private developers. We have said specifically—it is in the consultation paper—that we are approving ALMOs and councils with special venture vehicles to build council homes and bid for social housing grant in order to do so. The important issue is about providing the additional homes that we need. We want the flexibility for housing associations, councils and private developers to be able to contribute to the building of more social and shared ownership housing. Local housing companies offer a great opportunity to do so.
	The decent homes programme continues in its current form, and all bar one council have now identified ways of meeting that standard, including as a result of the substantial investment that has gone to individual councils. We have the most ambitious target to get to zero carbon of any country in the world. The target includes standards not only for heating and power, but for appliances in the home. The standards are extremely ambitious. We will need improvements in technology and strong co-operation between local councils and private developers to meet them. They are ambitious standards, but we have a dual aim: to be able to deliver more homes that are both affordable and sustainable. That requires a little hard-headedness, not just the flaky sums that the Liberal Democrats often provide.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I repeat the plea that I made during the earlier statement. This statement is important, but there is a further important statement and the main business of the House to follow. I ask hon. Members to discipline themselves to one supplementary question and a brief response; otherwise, I am afraid that many of them will be unsuccessful in catching my eye.

Phyllis Starkey: I am pleased that the Minister has taken up the recommendation that was made by Shelter and endorsed by the Communities and Local Government Committee to increase social rented housing, but I am still not clear about how the Government's proposals will ensure that social rented housing is provided in response to local needs, particularly in areas where councils are rated relatively poorly and have therefore not been allowed the rights of more highly rated councils.

Yvette Cooper: We are clear that we need to increase social housing in all areas of the country. We are concerned that the level of social housing has not increased in some areas, perhaps in part because housing associations in those areas did not bid for new developments. That is one of the reasons we want local councils to play a stronger role—including through local housing companies and by using their own land—in delivering mixed communities and, potentially, high levels of new housing in their areas.
	In addition to the work of housing associations and the partnerships that are possible between housing associations and local councils, we are saying that local councils should be able to build council homes, where it offers value for money to do so. We are identifying certain ALMOs that will be able to bid, and consulting on proposals to enable councils to keep the rents and capital receipts from the new homes that they build. We are opening the next round of pre-qualification to ALMOs that have a two-star rating and to local authorities, so as to widen the number of organisations that can apply, but they will need to ensure that they have the appropriate skills in place to carry out the necessary development work.
	This is not about returning to the old council estates. It needs to be about mixed communities and about developing, in partnership, communities that people want to live in. There is a range of different ways of doing that, and we will work closely with local councils and housing associations to take this forward.

David Curry: But none of this is going to happen if the planning system does not permit it. The Government are making it easier to build conservatories, granny annexes and nuclear power stations, but they are not doing a lot to make it easier to build houses. Would not it be a good start to abandon and rule out definitively their ill-conceived proposals for a planning gain tax, and to concentrate on getting more out of the devil that everyone knows—section 106 agreements—or on moving to a roof tax? At least we would then have some certainty.

Yvette Cooper: I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the Green Paper proposals that set out a series of alternatives to a planning gain supplement. We think that a planning gain supplement has the potential to raise the most resources for infrastructure while not deterring development, because it is value sensitive. We are prepared to consult on and discuss a range of alternatives before we bring in a planning gain supplement Bill, but we will require councils and other developers to make serious proposals on how they would make those alternatives work. As I have said, we believe that there are advantages to a planning gain supplement.

Nick Raynsford: I congratulate my hon. Friend on her announcement and on the Green Paper. I give my wholehearted support to the commitment to expand the housing programme, which will be warmly welcomed by sane people throughout the country. The lesson from the past that everyone should learn is that the mono-tenure estates that we created in the last century—in the owner-occupied sector and in the public housing sector—were a serious mistake. Will my hon. Friend remain adamant about maintaining mixed communities involving a partnership between different providers, and not be tempted by the blandishments of the back-to-the-future Liberal Democrats, who appear to want to take us back to some kind of failed response, which would be a serious mistake?

Yvette Cooper: My right hon. Friend is right. Mixed communities are hugely important in sustaining those areas and providing opportunities for the people who live in them. Establishing such communities was one of the aspirations of the post-war generation, but it did not manage to achieve it. It is crucial that we get those partnerships working, and we believe that there is potential for local housing companies to develop exactly that kind of approach, to ensure that we do not have mono-tenure estates involving unfair segregation, with social housing estates on one side of town and the executive estate on the other.

George Young: I, too, welcome the proposals to increase the supply of housing. I note the announcement of a £3 billion increase in the budget for affordable housing. Will the Minister confirm that she was successful in getting all that money out of the Treasury, and that she has not had to raid any other part of her Department's budget to find it?

Yvette Cooper: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman welcomes the increase in affordable housing, and in housing across the board. I know that, as a former housing Minister, he takes a strong interest in these matters. As part of this investment, we are getting greater efficiencies from housing associations—[Hon. Members: "Ah!"] In addition to the £3 billion additional public sector investment going into social housing and shared ownership housing, we shall get efficiencies from housing associations, because we believe that many of them are not using their assets sufficiently effectively. We want to ensure that we get better results and better value for money.

Ann Cryer: Is my hon. Friend aware that there used to be an excellent firm in my constituency called British Mohair Spinners? Unfortunately, it went down the tubes many years ago, but it is good to know that its factory site is now being used to create many apartments, which will be of great use to my constituents. Is my hon. Friend quite sure that firms that are not keen on developing such brownfield sites are being allowed to use greenfield sites only when there are absolutely no brownfield sites left in the area?

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to regenerate brownfield sites and the need to require developers to consider them. Local councils must decide how land should be identified in the area, to determine which sites are appropriate and to set their own brownfield targets. PPS3, the new planning policy on housing, gives local councils the flexibility to set their own brownfield targets and to take action if they think that developers are cherry-picking on greenfield sites.

Bob Russell: Does the Minister accept that we have a housing crisis because of this Government's failure over the past 10 years? Paragraph 40 of her policy statement refers to the building of council homes. Will the Minister clarify how many of the 2 million new homes envisaged by the year 2016 will be council homes?

Yvette Cooper: That will depend on the decisions that councils take, including about ALMOs. It will also depend on what proposals they make in connection with local housing companies or bids for social housing grants. What we can say is that we believe that, by 2010, 70,000 new homes need to be affordable and 45,000 of them should be social homes. The proportion of council homes will depend, as I say, on decisions taken by councils, developers and housing associations across the country. We believe that, in many cases, housing associations will be able to bring in additional private sector resources and additional borrowing. We also think that the best results are likely to happen where there is partnership between the different organisations.

Emily Thornberry: Does my right hon. Friend agree that today's statement provides opportunities for the 13,000 families on my local authority waiting list if, and only if, local authorities take full advantage of the opportunities to ensure decent homes for these people?

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend is right that there is a huge responsibility on local councils to do more to improve and increase housing in their areas. We are giving local councils more flexibility and more powers—different options, different ways forward, different ways of using their own resources, different ways of drawing in additional resources either from central Government or from the private sector. We are giving local councils a much stronger role in housing in the local area, but we need them to rise to the challenge and do their bit to deliver the homes that their communities need.

John Greenway: Two weeks ago, Scarborough council's planning committee refused permission for 300 new homes opposite Filey school because it believed that the main drainage and foul drainage were inadequate. The drainage system overflowed and was proved to be inadequate in the Filey floods last week. Will the Minister use this new planning policy statement as an opportunity to place greater emphasis on the importance of adequate drainage and foul drainage, which are the cause of so much suffering during the current floods?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about drainage. Some terrible events over the last month are due to poor drainage or drainage simply overflowing as a result of the level of rainfall and water. We think that more can be done to improve drainage. There are some good examples, as in the design of Milton Keynes, which had very good drainage proposals ensuring the use of balancing pools into which water can flow. There are also new designs, which improve drainage by providing sustainable urban drainage systems that do not take all of the water into existing mains drains. The hon. Gentleman is also right that there are other ways of using the opportunity of new development—by accessing section 106 money, for example—to improve the infrastructure, including the drainage. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is looking into a wider range of issues surrounding improving drainage in response to flooding, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are looking into taking proposals forward, not just as part of the new planning policy statement on climate change, but as part of a wider programme of work to deliver more sustainable housing.

Tony Lloyd: In welcoming my hon. Friend's statement, may I draw her attention to one of the problems in areas such as inner-city Manchester? An awful lot of new houses have been built that it was hoped would be affordable, but the process was frustrated by the speculative buying of many people from this country and outside Britain who bought to let, pushing prices up and putting houses out of the reach of ordinary people? Will she look specifically at that? There is nothing wrong with the rental market, but there is something wrong with speculative purchase, which pushes prices up and up.

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend will agree that affordable private rented housing is important, but we need to ensure that it is both affordable and of an appropriate quality. I have particular concerns about some of the investment that is not buy to let, but buy to leave, whereby flats or new developments are left empty as a result of investors or speculators sitting on properties. Local councils should think carefully about using some of their empty homes powers to bring some of those properties back into use. They have the powers to do so, but we are looking at more incentives as part of the Green Paper to support that.

Mark Prisk: Last December, the Minister and her colleagues endorsed a housing development that would result in the concreting over of 1,500 acres of green belt land in my constituency. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister promised at that Dispatch Box that such land will be robustly protected. Will the Minister confirm that her previous policy has changed and that that land is now safe, or are we not to trust the new Prime Minister's promises?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman will know that we do not comment on individual planning decisions in the House, but our policy on the green belt remains precisely the same as it has always been. We have made that clear both in the planning White Paper and in the House as part of the Green Paper.

Adrian Bailey: I welcome my hon. Friend's statement and the increase in funding for housing. My area has a thriving private sector market, mostly on brownfield sites, and a successful ALMO, which has hugely improved the number of decent homes, but there is still an acute shortage of social housing. Will she ensure that there are new models of working between local authorities, ALMOs, housing associations and funders such as local building societies to assess housing need and secure the models that will deliver those houses for people?

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend makes an important point. His local council is under a responsibility to assess housing need in the area, but it needs to draw together different organisations to ensure that it can respond to that need. We are giving councils greater flexibility to do so, and I hope that they will be able to find partners to join them to rise to that challenge.

Sammy Wilson: The Minister set forward the aim of creating more affordable homes, but does she not recognise that there are a number of contradictions in the Green Paper? The standards that will be required—higher standards and new designs and technologies—will involve extra upfront costs. The green spaces that will be required for greener homes and green spaces will involve less intensive land use. All those factors, along with the fact that the £3 billion is not even an extra £3 billion, will make it very difficult to deliver homes that are more affordable and not more costly.

Yvette Cooper: No, the £3 billion is extra public sector funding for affordable housing. On top of that, we will get additional efficiencies from housing associations. That is what allows us to reach the figure of 70,000 additional homes that we will provide. In addition, it is true that we are raising standards at the same time as we deliver new homes. That is challenging to the industry, housing associations and developers across the country. It is an opportunity for us to raise additional resources through planning gain, which can contribute to that. Some of the higher standards, particularly in environmental technologies, will be delivered and will have the potential to deliver economies of scale, which, over time, should drive the costs of those new technologies down. I do not think that we have a choice. We cannot simply choose between quantity and quality. We have to provide both.

Kevan Jones: I welcome the part of my right hon. Friend's statement that emphasises partnership work between local authorities, the private sector and housing associations. In my constituency, there are some excellent examples of that already, which are delivering affordable homes and regenerating former coal-mining villages. However, that work is under threat from the regional spatial strategy, which will put an artificial limit on the number of new houses that can be built in Durham. When the regional spatial strategy is agreed, will she ensure that these artificial limits, which will kill off communities and not do what she wants, are not allowed?

Yvette Cooper: I cannot comment on the detail of the regional spatial strategy at this stage of the process. We need additional house building in the north and the south. The approach taken in the previous regional planning guidance and the previous restrictions that were in place contributed to the lack of affordability across the north. We have to make sure that that does not happen again.

Gerald Howarth: The Minister said:
	"I can announce that the Ministry of Defence has agreed to bring forward six sites with the potential for 7,000 homes"
	including in Aldershot. Is this, perchance, the same scheme that has been up and running for the past three years—Project Connaught—or is it a brand new scheme? In either case, who will decide the mix between affordable and other forms of housing? Thanks to the former Deputy Prime Minister's garden-grabbing policy, we have a surfeit of apartments and flats, when what we need in Aldershot and Farnborough is more family homes. I would like an assurance from the Minister that we will get them.

Yvette Cooper: We are announcing today additional land agreed in partnership between the Ministry of Defence and English Partnerships, with 50 per cent. affordable housing on those sites. The local planning authority will decide the appropriate mix to ensure that there are sufficient family homes. He is right to raise the issue of family homes. There are many areas where we need more family homes to meet the needs of the local community. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make representations to his local planning authority.

Andrew Slaughter: My constituents will welcome the Government's commitment to build more affordable homes, as did those in my neighbouring constituency of Ealing, Southall last Thursday. What can my right hon. Friend do about Tory councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham that have adopted policies to cut by half the amount of affordable housing being built and to cut the number of affordable rented homes to a quarter of the amount achieved by the previous Labour council?

Yvette Cooper: It is disappointing when councils oppose additional affordable homes, including more social housing, as included in the Green Paper. We will expect councils across the country, whatever their political complexion, to respond to that challenge.

Andrew Tyrie: The Minister announced that Chichester, in addition to Aldershot, will take extra houses on a MOD site. How many will Chichester be expected to take? Is it realistic for Chichester to cope with those houses in view of the fact that the Government are intending to downgrade St. Richard's, the major hospital there?

Yvette Cooper: I hoped that the hon. Gentleman would take the opportunity to welcome the possibility of additional affordable homes in his constituency. Around 50 per cent. of the new homes on MOD sites will need to be affordable, including social housing and shared-ownership housing. I am sure that first-time buyers in and around his constituency will welcome that. At this stage, we cannot anticipate the planning process. We need full assessments of the level of housing on a particular site and the level of infrastructure required. The Government are investing substantial sums in additional infrastructure and although Opposition Members call for more infrastructure, they are never willing to back the extra money for it.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We must now conclude questions on this statement. I realise that many Members will be disappointed, but I hope that they understand that there is a further statement and the main business to follow.

INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE

Jim Murphy: I would like to make a statement on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office White Paper on the United Kingdom's approach to the European Union intergovernmental conference. The White Paper will be laid before the House today. Copies will be placed in the Library of the House, and they can also be obtained from the Vote Office. It will also be available on the FCO website.
	I will publish tomorrow a written ministerial statement to accompany a Command Paper that will examine the non-IGC priorities of the Portuguese presidency for the remainder of 2007. In a meeting today in Brussels attended by the Foreign Secretary, the 27 EU member states will launch an IGC to draw up a reform treaty for the enlarged EU. We expect a first draft of the treaty text to be published at that meeting. It will be an amending treaty, which will be good for the UK and the EU, and it will be prepared on the basis of the IGC mandate agreed by the June European Council. The IGC will agree changes to the existing EC and EU treaties to make the EU's institutions more transparent, effective and efficient.
	The Portuguese presidency plans to update Foreign Ministers on the progress of the IGC at its informal meeting on 8 September. The presidency aims to reach agreement on a text at the informal European Council meeting in Lisbon on 18 October, and to sign it off formally at the December European Council. That is an ambitious timetable but, on the basis of the very good deal the UK secured at the June European Council, the Government support the aim of reaching an early agreement.
	The process should help bring to a close several years of debate on institutional reform, and resolve that for the foreseeable future. The proposed reform treaty will be an amending treaty based on the existing EU treaties. As paragraph 1 of the IGC mandate states:
	"The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called 'Constitution', is abandoned."
	The Government's approach to the IGC negotiations is set out in detail in today's White Paper. We want a reform treaty that provides a way for the member states of an enlarged EU to work together for mutual benefit, sets out the EU's powers and limits, ensures that foreign policy remains based on unanimity, protects national security, and gives national Parliaments a greater role in EU decision making.
	The Government will not accept a treaty that transfers power from the UK on issues of fundamental importance to our sovereignty. The agreement reached at the June European Council reflects the red lines set out by the UK. At the Council, we made it clear that we wanted a treaty without constitutional characteristics, and we stated clearly that we would not accept anything in a new treaty that required us to change our existing labour and social legislation; we would protect our common law system and our police and judicial processes; we would maintain an independent foreign and defence policy; and we would protect our tax and social security system. We secured all of that in the IGC mandate. We also secured an important clarification that national security is outside the scope of the treaty: the new treaty will state explicitly that national security remains the sole responsibility of each member state.
	The measures set out in the IGC mandate, which now need to be turned into treaty text, offer the prospect of an EU that is more effective, democratic, open, and streamlined. The reform treaty will help to make the EU more coherent. The presidency currently rotates every six months. Instead, a new permanent President of the European Council will serve for a period of two and a half years. Over the next two and a half years, the presidency will be held in six-monthly rotation by Portugal, Slovenia, France, the Czech Republic and Sweden. In future, the permanent presidency will help to ensure better continuity.
	The reform treaty will help to make the EU better able to take decisions. The principle of qualified majority voting, established by the treaty of Rome in 1958 and substantially expanded in the Single European Act 1986, will be extended to allow decisions to be taken more easily on issues where the 27 member states can bring genuine value by acting together. The UK will retain control over issues of importance to our national sovereignty, but there are many areas where it will be in our interest to work with EU partners, and to unblock decision making to allow us to do so efficiently—such as on urgent EU aid to third countries and humanitarian support operations.
	The reform treaty will also help to make the EU more effective on the global stage. The IGC mandate includes a declaration stating that nothing in the treaty affects the responsibilities and powers of member states in foreign policy. Currently the EU has two primary external-facing roles: the EU high representative for the common foreign and security policy, and the Commissioner for External Relations. The reform treaty will replace those roles with one new high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. That will give the EU a clearer voice in promoting the agreed objectives that member states want to deliver around the world, without impacting on the independence of member states' foreign policies.
	Additional reforms proposed in the treaty are aimed at making the EU more democratic—with a welcome and greater role for national parliaments to be involved in the work of the EU, not least in policing subsidiarity—and more streamlined, with a smaller Commission, and a reduction in the number of Members of the European Parliament. Conservative Members may be pleased to learn that the reform treaty also sets out a mechanism for withdrawal from the EU.
	Despite that, Britain's place is and should remain within the EU, and this Government believe strongly that a policy of positive and active engagement in Europe over the past 10 years has yielded great benefits for the UK. EU membership brings us real gains in terms of wealth, jobs, peace and security. Around 3 million British jobs are linked directly and indirectly to our trade with other EU countries. More than half of our overseas trade is with other EU countries. Recent EU initiatives to tackle climate change and energy security have demonstrated the concrete benefits of active membership. The EU presidency statement on the Litvinenko case last week was very helpful.
	By the end of the IGC process, the EU should have moved beyond the seemingly continuous conversation about institutional reform and instead be focused on tackling the delivery deficit and on the issues where the EU can make real improvements in people's lives. That includes EU co-operation in areas such as climate change, energy security, consumer protection, migration, economic reform and the fight against world poverty and international terror. On the issue of economic reform, for example, despite recent and real progress, there are 92 million economically inactive people of working age in the EU—more than the combined population of Scandinavia and all 10 of the member states who joined the EU in 2004. So it is clear that Europe has to be more effective in its delivery.
	The mandate for the IGC promises to deliver a reform treaty that will achieve the UK's aims and deliver for Britain, and for Europe, the capacity to act more effectively to tackle global challenges together. We are stronger when we work together with our partners in the EU to meet the shared challenges we face. An EU of 27 member states, with the prospect of further expansion in future, needs the reform treaty. The treaty will allow us to move beyond questions of process, and focus on delivering prosperity and security for our citizens. That is firmly in the interests of the EU, and most definitely in the interests of the UK. I therefore welcome the commencement of the IGC process, and the publication of this White Paper. The result, I have no doubt, will be a treaty that is good for Britain and good for Europe, and I commend it to the House.

Mark Francois: I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. This White Paper is long overdue. We have before us a treaty of fundamental importance to the nature of the European Union and Britain's relationship with it. It is two years since the original EU constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters, during which time the Government were largely notable for their silence. They have shown determination only in keeping the House and voters in the dark.
	On the nature of what is set to be agreed by the intergovernmental conference, does the Minister agree with the Irish Prime Minister, who says that the new treaty is 90 per cent. the same as the constitution, or the Spanish Foreign Minister, who said yesterday that it is 98 per cent. the same? Does he agree with the Danish Prime Minister, who said that
	"all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters—the core—is left"?
	Or does he agree with the German Chancellor, who said:
	"The fundamentals of the Constitution have been maintained in large part"?
	Even if he disagrees with the leaders of other EU countries, will the Minister confirm what members of his own Government have said about the treaty? Was not the then Foreign Secretary and current Lord Chancellor right when he said that if the treaty contained an EU President and EU Foreign Minister, it would effectively be the constitution, or does the treaty not create an EU President and an EU Foreign Minister? Was not the Trade Minister—Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, to give him his full title—right when he said:
	"This is a con to call this a treaty—it's not. It's exactly the same—it's a Constitution."
	If the Minister will not take it from those two ministerial colleagues, will he take it from his own Prime Minister, who, when asked at an Anglo-Irish press conference last week what he had been discussing, replied:
	"The Taoiseach and I have had a meeting this morning. We have discussed the European constitution and how that can move forward".
	If even the Prime Minister can no longer keep up the pretence that the treaty is not a constitution, why is the Minister for Europe still bothering?
	The Minister has pointed to one line in paragraph 1 of the IGC mandate to show that the constitutional concept is, as he put it, "abandoned". What he did not read out to the House, however, was the very next sentence, which states that the new treaty
	"will introduce into the existing Treaties, which remain in force, the innovations...from the 2004 IGC, as set out below in a detailed fashion."
	In other words, the constitution has essentially been brought back, but the name has just been changed. Was that not exactly the deal that the German presidency set out in its report of 14 June, which referred to
	"Avoiding...the symbolism and the title 'Constitution'"
	while
	"the substance of the Constitutional Treaty...should be preserved"?
	The simple truth is this: the Government's main aim has been to re-label the constitution and hide how that has been done in the small print so that they can get out of their promise of a referendum. Is not that why the former Italian Prime Minister and current Home Minister said that the new treaty was "unreadable", adding that the
	"UK prime minister...can go to the Commons and say, 'Look, you see, it's absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.'"
	Will the Government seek changes to the IGC mandate, or do they regard the current text as inviolable? When will an English text be available, given that the treaty has been published today only in French? Will the Minister confirm that an English text will be available to the House before we rise for the summer recess?
	Does the Minister accept the opinion of legal experts that the new wording on competition seriously weakens the EU's commitment to free and open competition? Should not the old wording in fact be restored?
	Does the Minister share the concern that the new treaty, for the first time, potentially subordinates national Parliaments to EU institutions? Will he ensure that the wording of the relevant clause on that point is changed from "shall" to "may"? Will the Government support the Czech proposals for a new mechanism for member states to take back powers from the EU where that is appropriate?
	As the IGC will be held in the summer recess, how will the House of Commons have genuine input into the process? I understand that the Foreign Affairs Committee, whose Chairman is in his place, has asked Ministers to appear before it during the recess. Has that offer been accepted and, if so, what are the dates for the scheduled hearings?
	Is not the Minister just a tad concerned that the so-called red lines are falling to pieces after only a couple of weeks' scrutiny? On the first red line—the charter of fundamental rights—is the Minister worried that Advocate-General Tizzano of the European Court of Justice thinks that no legal safeguard on the charter of fundamental rights will work if it is made legally binding, as the Government have agreed? Has he seen yesterday's opinion from the Swedish Prime Minister that
	"it should be stressed that the UK was given a clarification, not an opt-out."?
	Why has that red line already been downgraded from covering any change to UK law in any way simply to cover existing labour and social legislation? So that line is collapsing already.
	On the second red line regarding criminal justice, can the Minister explain why it will no longer be intergovernmental, but subject to the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction when the Government specifically blocked that, with our support, in the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice? Can he explain why our national veto has been downgraded to only an opt-in?
	On the third red line regarding the independence of our foreign policy, does the Minister share the apparent concern of the legal adviser to the European Scrutiny Committee that, because the safeguard on foreign affairs is only a non-legally binding declaration, it may be meaningless?
	On the fourth red line regarding taxation, which we have argued all along was put up as a red herring, has the Minister seen the BBC Europe editor, Mark Mardell's blog of 6 July?  [ Interruption. ] Labour Members should listen to this; it refers to their Government. He said of that red line:
	"The Government have the good grace to privately admit it was a bit of a con and was purely presentational."
	So there are vital issues at stake, even outside of the so-called red lines themselves.
	Can the Minister explain why the Government now support a single legal personality for the EU, when the then Prime Minister boasted all along that he had blocked what he called "this potentially damaging proposal" at Amsterdam? Importantly, can he confirm that the ratchet clause, which would allow further centralising treaty changes without the need for an intergovernmental conference, is still in?
	In the 2004 White Paper, the Government claimed that the constitution did not fundamentally change the EU. Now, they say that the constitution would have fundamentally changed the EU, but that the new treaty does not. If Ministers now admit that they were wrong then, why should we—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. As we have limited time for this statement, will the hon. Gentleman please draw his remarks to a close?

Mark Francois: You were 30 seconds ahead of me, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	Almost every MP in the House stood on a manifesto that promised a referendum on the EU constitution. EU leaders, including the Prime Minister, say that the new treaty is the EU constitution. Ministers say that they want more accountability and consultation, so why will they not make themselves accountable and consult the British people? Why should the British people trust the Government, when the Government will not trust them? So we say: honour our promises, trust the people and let them decide.

Jim Murphy: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind half sentence at the beginning of his comments. He asked 13 or 14 subsequent questions, and I will try to get through as many of them as time allows. Incidentally, that is more questions than there are Conservative Back Benchers here today on this important issue.
	The hon. Gentleman asks what the difference is between this and the original constitution. There is a substantial set of differences, not only across the EU, but specifically here in the UK. Not only do we have the opt-in on justice and home affairs, we also have the 13 exemptions or protections on qualified majority voting. Of course, we also have the protocol on the charter of fundamental rights.
	The hon. Gentleman asks about the comments of my noble Friend comrade Lord trade commissar Digby Jones. If the hon. Gentleman were to be fair, as I know that he can be, he would also share with the House the fact that the noble Lord made those comments before the IGC process while commenting on the old constitutional treaty. The hon. Gentleman talks of our attitude on the IGC process. We are not tempted to reopen issues of substance on the basis that we got a very good deal.
	On competition, the hon. Gentleman asks specifics. The fact is that the legal position on competition has not been changed. The system will ensure that competition in the internal market is not distorted, and that is guaranteed in a legally binding protocol in a number of treaty references: articles 4, 27, 34, 81 to 89, 96, 98, 105 and 157 of the European Community treaty.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about a BBC blog. I have not had a chance to read it—I was too busy reading the various EU articles on unfettered competition—and I have the good sense not to have my own blog.
	There is a strengthened role for national Parliaments, which should be welcomed across the House, particularly in relation to the issues of subsidiarity. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is important that we continue to keep Parliament informed. I have attended relevant Select Committees in the House of Commons and the House of Lords on that very issue in the past week or two, and we will continue to find ways to keep Parliament informed, including by providing draft non-confidential information that arises from the IGC process. The timing of the Foreign Affairs Committee hearing is really not an issue for Ministers.
	It is absolutely clear that the foreign policy situation is unchanged. It is an issue of unanimity, where the rights of member states and national Governments are protected. On the issue of justice and home affairs, we do have that opt-in. On the charter of fundamental rights, I can do no better than to quote from article 1 of the IGC mandate:
	"the Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice, or any court or tribunal of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that"
	the charter "reaffirms."
	I re-emphasise the point that we have not had referendums on previous treaties. This treaty transfers less power than Maastricht and the Single European Act. Only one member state—our good friends the Irish—is considering a referendum on the treaty. I look forward to continuing this conversation with the hon. Gentleman through the recess and beyond.

Michael Moore: We wholeheartedly agree with the Minister's statement that the European Union brings real gains in terms of wealth, jobs, peace and security. Similarly, we agree that one of the key aims of the new treaty ought to be to ensure that the European Union is more effective, democratic, open and streamlined. However, Members on both sides of the House—whether they are for or against the European Union—will be disappointed by his reply about the way in which we will scrutinise the efforts of his Government.
	Given that the Minister is making his statement today, just as the text of the treaty is being published in Brussels, and given that most of the work on the treaty will be completed before the House returns in October, how does he square that with the Foreign Secretary's statement in the House in response to the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes)? The Foreign Secretary said:
	"I am keen that we have extensive investigation and scrutiny of the mandate and then of the reform treaty when it finally comes forward as a treaty". —[ Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 801.]
	Does the Minister accept that if he does not allow adequate scrutiny as this stage by this national Parliament, he risks undermining one of the key principles of the new treaty before it is even established?

Jim Murphy: In response to the pretty fair point that the hon. Gentleman makes, the fact is that the treaty envisages a much enhanced role for national Parliaments—interestingly both for the House of Commons and the other place. So, as he says, it is important that we continue to find ways to maintain that dialogue in Parliament and with Parliament's Select Committees. That is why both the Foreign Secretary and I have accepted the kind invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to appear before his Committee at a time of its choosing, rather than our choosing. At least some of that will happen during the parliamentary recess. Of course, we remain available to discuss the issues with other Select Committees and we continue to seek opportunities to discuss the issues with Front Benchers and Back Benchers of all parties. I am meeting the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who speaks for the Conservatives on this issue, on Wednesday, and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats on this issue, tomorrow. I look forward to continued opportunities to discuss, bilaterally and with the Select Committees, ways of continuing to inform the House.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind right hon. and hon. Members of the importance of asking single supplementary questions, for short responses. We still have important business: the introduction of new Members and the main business before the House.

Mike Gapes: The Minister has confirmed that the constitutional concept has been abandoned, and I welcome that. However, I ask that when he appears before the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, which I hope will be a few days after the meeting on 8 September, he will give us greater clarity about the way in which the strengthening of the foreign policy aspects of the European Union will be taken forward. Will the welcome initiative of our Prime Minister and President Sarkozy be more effective under the new arrangements, so that we can, for example, end the conflict in Darfur?

Jim Murphy: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I can think of no better way of spending the parliamentary recess than appearing before him and his Committee. My hon. Friend is right to mention the opportunities that result from having a co-operative approach with our European partners on defence, foreign policy and many other matters. I once again reassure my hon. Friend and others that the UK has a veto on foreign policy. That is entirely appropriate. Where we agree with our European partners, we can act together, but where we continue to disagree, we can of course act alone, if we so wish.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Will the Minister comment on the notorious new division of competences, or powers, in the draft constitution, whereby the EU gains exclusive power over commercial and competition policy, and whereby most other policy areas are defined in a way that prevents national Parliaments from legislating when the EU decides to do so? That was controversial at the time, and it was in large measure opposed by the Government in unsuccessful amendments, so why has the Minister apparently given up on that matter, and why is he waving it through? Will he attempt to get those powers back through amendments tabled at the intergovernmental conference?

Jim Murphy: We do not intend to table substantive changes to the IGC treaty agreement. I have already made it clear that European competitiveness and free and unfettered competition will be protected as part of a binding protocol on competition. On the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the charter of fundamental rights, the UK's position on the protocol aligned with that is clear.

Keith Vaz: I warmly welcome the statement and thank the Minister and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), for the work that was done on 22 June to secure such a good deal for Britain. Will the Minister ensure that there is full engagement with the British people during the process, so that they can rely on proper information from the Government, rather than on Mark Mardell's blog?

Jim Murphy: It was remiss of me not to pay a warm tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), the former Minister for Europe, for his work in that role at the outset; it is possibly more important to do so now that he is Government Chief Whip. I also wish to pay my respects to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who was also a former Minister for Europe. He did an enormous amount of work in trying to destroy some of the myths around the issue of Europe and the European Union. I do not wish to pick on Mr. Mark Mardell, but any advice that anyone in the House can give to provide an accurate picture of the real benefit of the European Union to the United Kingdom is welcome. For example, it has meant 3 million jobs, co-operation on environmental issues, clean water, cleaner beaches, cleaner air—those are the real and substantive improvements and changes that the EU can deliver.

James Clappison: The Minister honourably maintains that the treaty is completely different from the constitutional treaty, even though no European Government, and no other sentient being, agrees with his point of view. Nevertheless, for old time's sake, will he remind us what the last Labour manifesto said about the European constitution and a referendum?

Jim Murphy: As I said at the outset, the constitutional concept has been abandoned. There is a radical difference between the reform treaty and the prior constitutional treaty. The real test, as we look around Europe, is how many of the other 27 member states of the European Union are even contemplating holding a referendum—just one, our great friends, the Irish, simply because of their specific constitutional arrangement and the nature of their Parliament. In the United Kingdom we have a different parliamentary and constitutional arrangement from that of our good friends in Ireland.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: My hon. Friend will know that because of a number of imposed majority votes within the Community and particularly within the Commission, Britain is losing control over its safety audit in aviation and engineering, and in relation to our ports and to single skies. Will he therefore propose that the House creates a safety audit to look closely at any aspect of European institutions, however they are framed and however they are imposed?

Jim Murphy: My hon. Friend raises important points, and I look forward to discussing them with her, if she so wishes. There is an extension of qualified majority voting but much of it is minor and technical, and much of it is to re-establish existing practice—for example, qualified majority voting on the technicalities of German reunification. That is important. There are other examples of qualified majority voting on international aid and humanitarian support, but on the specific issue that my hon. Friend raises, I am happy to meet her and other hon. Friends before the parliamentary recess, if time in her diary allows.

William Cash: Does the Minister accept that he has a fight on his hands, and that this dishonest treaty is one of constitutional change? It may not be exactly the same as the constitutional treaty that came before, but it is equivalent, and that is the important fact. When he next comes before the European Scrutiny Committee, will he bring the Foreign Office legal adviser so that we can ask him questions that the Minister cannot answer?

Jim Murphy: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind and gallant comments, which are never knowingly understated. I can put my response no more clearly than by quoting the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who chairs the Conservatives' democracy taskforce, who said:
	"The idea we have a referendum is frankly absurd."
	I can think of no more appropriate response to the comments of the hon. Gentleman.

Denis MacShane: I warmly welcome the Conservatives' approach, because their obsessive Europhobia is a guarantee of third place results in elections to come. Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposed reform treaty creates a president of the European council of nations which the European Commission opposed because it gives more power to the nations of Europe, that foreign policy remains under the control of the nations of Europe, and that the Parliaments of the nations of Europe will have more power, so the treaty is one of the weakest since 1957? We might as well have a referendum on the results in Ealing, Southall and in Sedgefield, which were good for the country. Holding a referendum on the treaty is a plain absurdity.

Jim Murphy: Again, I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend as a former Minister for Europe. He is correct that the treaty transfers— [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Far too many individual conversations are taking place.

Jim Murphy: My right hon. Friend is right. The treaty transfers much less power than the Single European Act or the treaty of Maastricht. Of course, all the Opposition Members who were in government at the time voted against a referendum on Maastricht, which was much more significant in its transfer of powers. It seems to many objective observers that the Conservative party of today is captured by a rabid anti-Euro fanaticism that is fantastic in its proportion and out of touch with reality.

Gregory Campbell: The Minister cannot but be aware of the growing disenchantment that exists regarding the ever-expanding EU. He declares that the treaty is not a revised constitution. Others beg to differ. Is not the simplest way to resolve that conflict to let the people of the United Kingdom decide by way of referendum?

Jim Murphy: Europe plays an enormous role in supporting the economy of Northern Ireland. Although the issue of cross-border co-operation is, of course, part of the constitutional settlement between north and south, we are not attracted to the level of co-operation to which the hon. Gentleman has alluded by following the Republic of Ireland in being the only other member state of the EU to sign up to having a referendum.

Stuart Bell: Will the Minister eschew the seductive suggestion of the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) to remove the word "shall" from provisions on democratic principles and replace it with the word "may"? He will be aware that the particular provision covers subsidiarity, proportionality, freedom, security, justice, treaty revision and inter-parliamentary co-operation, all subjects that are of some interest to every Member of this House.

Jim Murphy: My hon. Friend is right. That is why we are not reopening the issues of great substance in conversation with our European colleagues. Nevertheless, we continue to examine the precise wording of draft treaties, and I will return to the House and to my hon. Friend with the specifics in the weeks and months ahead.

Philip Hollobone: Do Her Majesty's Government support the inclusion in the reform treaty of a new mechanism for withdrawal from the European Union, and how would that mechanism work?

Jim Murphy: We support the inclusion of that specific clause in the treaty. The way to bring about that outcome is to vote for either the Conservative party or the UK Independence party at the next general election. On Europe, it is sometimes difficult to work out the difference between those two parties.

Charles Kennedy: I welcome the general direction outlined by the Minister and hope that the IGC meets with success. Does he agree that whether or not there is a referendum in due course—in the past 10 years under the previous premiership, the pro-European forces across parties and outside politics have on more than one occasion been marched up to the top of the hill in anticipation of something only to be marched down again—the Government need to get on the front foot, to take a broadly based proactive stance about constructive, sensible engagement in Europe and to isolate the extremist voices for what they are?

Jim Murphy: The right hon. Gentleman is correct. Europe is an enormous influence for good in the United Kingdom. In terms of economics, 3 million jobs rely on trade with the European Union. On co-operation and trying to create a stronger force positively to put the case for Europe, I look forward to any ideas that the right hon. Gentleman may have on the specifics.

Sandra Osborne: How confident is the Minister that a line can be drawn under constant institutional change once the reform treaty is agreed, given that some of our European partners are far more passionate about continual institutional change than the UK?

Jim Murphy: We live in hope that the endless cycle of conversation about continuous structural change can come to an end as a consequence of the agreement of this treaty. Enormous issues and challenges lie ahead for the European Union, and I am determined—the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are absolutely determined—to move Europe away from the constant introversion of looking at the important detail of structures and on to the issues that really matter to my hon. Friend's constituents in Ayrshire and people across the United Kingdom.

John Gummer: I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House welcome the Minister's support for the extension of the powers of national Parliaments. Will the Minister take that one stage further and explain throughout the country that parliamentary sovereignty means that we vote in this House about these matters, as the noble Baroness Thatcher said in debating the whole issue of the single market, and that in this country we do not take the foreign concept of a referendum?

Jim Murphy: Although I rarely agree with the noble Baroness Thatcher, I nevertheless agree with the right hon. Gentleman's observation. I hope that Conservative Front Benchers and Conservative Members around him—he is in a minority of perhaps two or three—listen to his wise and candid advice.

Angus Robertson: In welcoming the White Paper, which has much to commend it, I am intrigued by the four UK Government pre-conditions listed in chapter 3, including the
	"protection of the UK's common law system,"
	which is a sloppy and embarrassing drafting error that will find no friends in the Scots legal system. May I draw the Minister's attention to concerns in Scotland about the previous draft constitution and the inclusion of the common fisheries policy as an exclusive competence? Will he continue the recent discussions between the UK and Scottish Governments to ensure the appropriate IGC conclusions for all the nations of the UK and the European Union?

Jim Murphy: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point, because, as he knows, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the devolved Administrations to ensure that, where possible, we have a coherent approach across the United Kingdom. I look forward to discussing the precise details with him.

Kelvin Hopkins: I shall be campaigning strongly for a referendum and believe that my view is shared by millions of Labour supporters and trade unionists throughout Britain. My hon. Friend has talked about making the European Union more transparent and more democratic, yet the European Council meets in secret, has no minutes and simply adopts conclusions drawn up by bureaucrats. Is my hon. Friend going to try to make the European Council more democratic?

Jim Murphy: I could not hear every detail of my hon. Friend's comments, such is the attraction of our conversation about the European treaty—this statement is so popular, that the House is becoming busier with every passing question. I look forward to continuing the dialogue and have not given up all hope of convincing my hon. Friend of the error of his ways.

John Redwood: Given the importance of the red lines to the whole country, will this different Government go to the IGC and say that this country must have an unambiguous veto written in on all those issues, because, as the Minister knows, that is the only way in which to protect those positions?

Jim Murphy: As I have said, we will not accept any important transfer of sovereignty away from the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman voted against a referendum on Maastricht, which was much more substantial than this treaty. I can do no more than quote him:
	"If we sign the Amsterdam Treaty, we will abolish our country."
	He was wrong then, and he is wrong now.

Greg Hands: May I ask the Minister again about the charter of fundamental rights? Ten days ago, Margot Wallström, the vice-president of the European Commission, appeared before the European Scrutiny Committee, where on our opt-out on the charter of fundamental rights she said:
	"normally the opt-outs are respected—but I will not prejudge or speculate on what the Court of Justice will decide on fundamental rights and how this is applied throughout the European Union."
	If the Commission itself does not think that the opt-out is watertight, will he tell us why he does?

Jim Murphy: There is a straightforward answer to that. It is called the IGC mandate, article 1 of which states:
	"the Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice, or any court or tribunal of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms."
	In my three weeks in this job, I have learned an entirely new vocabulary—some would say a different language—but the important protections and rights that the UK enjoys are very clear in any language.

MEMBERS SWORN

The following  Members made the Affirmation required by law :
	Virendra Kumar Sharma Esq., for Ealing, Southall
	Philip Wilson Esq., for Sedgefield

Point of Order

Gerald Kaufman: Mr. Speaker, could you advise me of what procedure there is, when a Member of this House has been responsible for activities which have cost the public £1 million, for bringing him here on a charge of wasting police time?

Mr. Speaker: That is certainly not a matter for me.

STANDARDS AND PRIVILEGES

Mr. Speaker: Before I invite the Government to move the motion relating to the report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, I wish to remind the House that references to all right hon. and hon. Members should be in proper parliamentary language. The Chair will offer the customary protection to all Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway), in the course of this debate.
	 Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That this House—
	(i) approves the Sixth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 909); and
	(ii) accordingly suspends Mr George Galloway, Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, from the service of the House from Monday 8th October for a period of eighteen sitting days; and in calculating that period paragraph (3) of Standing Order No. 12 (House not to sit on certain Fridays) shall not apply. —[Mr. Michael Foster.]

George Galloway: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, for your earlier remarks.
	I want to begin by apologising to the House for the fact that the important business that was transacted before we came to this matter necessarily had to be truncated because this is going to be a significant piece of business that must finish at 10 o'clock. Thus hon. Members who wished to speak on the devastating flooding that is inundating their constituencies were not called or had to be more succinct than they would have preferred. The great issue of public housing, which is the flagship of the new Labour Prime Minister's first term—at least I hope it is his first term—had to be dealt with in a very perfunctory manner because of the other business that awaited. We have dealt with the important issue of intergovernmental relations within the European Union. We have had the happy occasion of the entry into the House of two new Members, just as one long-serving Member is about to go out the door. It just goes to show that as one door opens another one shuts.
	I apologise for the fact that after this mighty labour, which has brought forth really quite a little mouse, we now have to spend four hours, as we shall, discussing this matter. There was no trace of irony in the report. I suspect that that is because British baronets do not do irony, or at least not very well, and that there will not be much trace of irony in the speech that is to follow mine. Once the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had decided, as he said not once but six times in his report, that, in the course of a four-year investigation described by the Committee as being of unprecedented length and complexity, he had found no evidence of any personal gain by me, this whole story became a dispute about the funding of political campaigns. Being lectured by the current House of Commons on the funding of political campaigns is like being accused of having bad taste by Donald Trump or being accused of slouching by the hunchback of Notre Dame. This House stands in utter ill repute on the question of the funding of political campaigns.
	I shall develop that argument later. Suffice, for the moment, to say this. The police found a document with a list of secret lenders to the Labour party, every single one of whom was nominated either for a "K" or for what Lord Levy described as a "big P". This Parliament is stuffed full of political parties that were in turn stuffed full of secret loans and donations from millionaires or billionaires. None of the parties here—all three of them are culpable, a matter to which I shall return—ever asked the millionaires and billionaires who gave and lent them money where they got the money from. I am tempted to give just one example. Richard Desmond is a substantial benefactor to the Labour party. Did the treasurer of the Labour party ask Richard Desmond from which part of his considerable wealth he was donating handsomely to new Labour's coffers? Did the treasurer of the Labour party—I apologise to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for the language that I am about to use—ask if Mr. Desmond was giving from the profits of "Spunk-Loving Sluts", "Asian Babes", XXX pornographic television, or the profits of the  Daily Star—

Mr. Speaker: Order. As I said, I wish to give the hon. Gentleman as much leeway as I can, and I promised—of course I would do this for any hon. Member—to make sure that he has the protection of the Chair, but we are discussing the report of the Standards and Privileges Committee. The matters that he is raising at the moment are not relevant to that report, and he must come back to it.

George Galloway: With respect, Mr. Speaker, they are highly relevant. It is a question of glass houses and people throwing stones. It is a question of a committee of politicians criticising me for political fundraising when they themselves are responsible for political fundraising on a gigantic scale, from the most dubious of sources, in which they never applied to themselves the standards that they seek to apply to me in this report. It is a question not of standards, but of double standards. The more worldly members of the Committee may know that it is now known as the double standards Committee—the double standards in defence of privileges Committee.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I say to the hon. Gentleman that all members of the Committee acted in good faith. They were nominated to that Committee by the House and conducted their affairs properly. There has been no complaint whatsoever about the way in which they have conducted their affairs. In no way can I tolerate any hon. Gentleman—I know that feelings are running high for the hon. Gentleman—saying that they indulge in double standards. They do not.

George Galloway: Mr. Speaker, you say that there is no complaint whatsoever, but I have one, and I wish to lay it before the House and the country. It would surely be intolerable to forbid me to argue that the Committee has acted unjustly because of the notion—

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman says that he feels that the Committee has acted unjustly, he is legitimately able to put that case, but to say that it indulges in double standards is to say that it is acting in dishonourable way. If, the hon. Gentleman says that he has not had justice, put that case. You are highly articulate and you are able to do so. I know that from the period of years that I have known you. I say to you that having a complaint against the Committee is one thing, but you are entitled to say that you have not had justice without attacking the good character of any Committee member.

George Galloway: I am really in a bit of a difficulty here. If I am saying that I have not had justice, that means I have been treated unjustly. How can I argue that I have been treated unjustly without alluding to the fact—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman can put the case that he felt that he was treated unjustly; I understand that. It is for the House to decide after this debate finishes whether it feels that the strength of argument is with the hon. Gentleman or with the Committee.

George Galloway: Indeed, and I am just 10 minutes into what I am afraid is going to be a long speech, which has now been regularly interrupted by a teasing out of what is in order and what is not. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that there is considerable interest in this debate in the country, and I do not think that the country would consider it had been well served by the House of Commons if a Member who is about to be thrown out was not allowed to proceed with an argument against that—one which he had come here to make. I appeal to your spirit of generosity, because it will not be possible for me to make the case that I have been treated unjustly without criticising the way that I have been treated. I know that the notion is that we are all honourable Members here, but I am accused of being dishonourable, and it is not possible for me to defend myself without dealing with the way in which I have been treated. I hope that I will be able to make my case—always, of course, at your direction, Mr. Speaker.
	The Speaker knows how much I respect him personally. I respect Parliament. Having spent 20 years in Parliament, and having been five times elected to Parliament, I consider the words "Member of Parliament" to be the most honourable appellation that it is possible to wear in this country. I respect the fact that I have been elected to Parliament five times—always against the odds—from the beginning, when I defeated the now-deceased Lord Jenkins, right through to the last occasion, on which I became the first Member of Parliament in England to be elected from the left of Labour for 60 years.
	I respect Parliament. I respect the Select Committees of Parliament, even though I never managed to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, or that of any other previous Speaker, in order to be appointed to one. Despite my areas of expertise, I never reached those pinnacles. I respect the Standards and Privileges Committee, but that does not mean that I can honestly tell you that I respect every person currently in the Parliament. It cannot mean that I respect every decision made by a Select Committee. It cannot mean that I must respect the findings of this Committee, which I consider—and I am not alone in this—to be unjust. When considered as a whole, it is an example not of standards, but of double standards, and not of privilege, but the defence of the privileged. That is the case I want to make this evening.

Simon Hughes: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman can help us; I shall try to put this neutrally. The report suggests that the hon. Gentleman is dissatisfied with the Committee, and believes that it is a politicised tribunal, but I understand from the report that he has no objection about the commissioner for standards, or his judgment, process and conclusion. Is that a fair representation of the hon. Gentleman's views?

George Galloway: Alas, no. In fact, the opposite is the case. My complaints against the commissioner are even more trenchant than the complaints I intend to adduce against the Committee. If hon. Members will allow me to proceed with my case, I think that they will find some justice in what I have to say. I am accused in the Committee's report—indeed, I am sentenced by the Committee to 18 days' suspension—precisely because of the way I have conducted my defence against the accusations made. It says that in black and white. Rather surprisingly and sensitively, it states that if it were not for the way I had conducted my defence, I would merely have been asked to apologise to the House. I am being suspended for 18 days because of the way I conducted my defence. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, it has caused you some anxieties already this evening.
	I want to make the case in my speech, which I warn the House will necessarily be a long one, for the reasons why I conducted my defence in the way that I did. I shall begin, if I may, with my criticism of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer, who, in one of the delicious ironies—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am very reluctant to keep interrupting the hon. Gentleman. In these situations, I usually leave hon. Members who have had an accusation made against them to develop their case, but I could put it to the hon. Gentleman and the House that there is a long tradition of not attacking individuals, such as Officers of the House, who are not able to defend themselves. I remind the House that good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.

George Galloway: Mr. Speaker, this is now beginning to verge on the ridiculous. I say again that there are many people watching this debate this evening who would like to hear my defence against the charges of the standards commissioner, and the Committee on Standards and Privileges. Although you do so in the gentlest way, Mr. Speaker, if you are to come over the ball at me every time I make a couple of yards advance in my argument, we will really get nowhere. I cannot criticise the conduct of the inquiry without criticising the conduct of the person who conducted it. I shall try to do so as temperately as I can, but it will be seen as an attempt to gag me—as an attempt to silence me.

Mr. Speaker: I have known the hon. Gentleman for 30 years, and I do not think that I have the power to silence him. I do not think I have been able to do that. All I am saying is that the House has given me a set of rules that I must abide by, and see that they are enforced. It is not an attempt to gag the hon. Gentleman, but he must abide by the rules that Parliament has given me. I am the custodian of the rules, even in a situation such as this.

George Galloway: Mr. Speaker, Dr. David Kelly was a civil servant who could not defend himself, and look what happened to him. Are we really saying that an important official of the British state, who has conducted a four-year inquiry into me, cannot be criticised because of the position that he holds? That will not seem tenable to the public in the country. It might pass muster here, although not, I suspect, with everyone, but it surely cannot be the case that I cannot develop my criticism of the commissioner's inquiry into me, because I am gagged as far as mentioning the commissioner—the man who carried out the inquiry.
	I am sorry that those things are causing you difficulties, Mr. Speaker, but I am now 18 minutes into my speech and have barely been able to get started with the critique that I want to make of the way in which I have been treated. I am, after all, being excluded from Parliament. It is not a small thing. I am, after all, about to face the situation in which my constituents' Member of Parliament is banished from the building—a building in which I have sat for 20 years. I really would like to explain why I believe that I have been treated unjustly. I promise that the public will not understand the attempt to shield people from criticism, when I am the one who is being excluded from Parliament.
	If I may continue; in one of life's delicious little ironies, the parliamentary commissioner turns out—I am grateful to  The Daily Telegraph for this—to have once been the principal private secretary of the present Lord Hurd, who, in the 1980s, sat on the sofa with Saddam Hussein, helping to facilitate, as you will remember, Mr. Speaker, having been here with me, the supergun. Remember it—the arms to Iraq affair? That was the period in which the British Government were best friends with Saddam Hussein and I was outside the Iraqi embassy in London, demonstrating for human rights and democracy. That was the first of the ironies, but it is not the last.
	The commissioner is commended in the report for the assiduous way in which he conducted his inquiry, but yesterday we could discover in  The Guardian that Mr. Andrew Murray, the chairman of the Stop the War coalition, which organised the massive demonstrations of millions of people in London, and the communications officer of Britain's mightiest union, UNITE, which was formed through the merger of the engineers' union and the Transport and General Workers Union, of which I had the honour to be a member in good standing for 33 years—a very considerable figure in the land—was not interviewed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. That was despite the fact that he was a founder of the Mariam appeal, an officer of the Mariam appeal and a trustee of the Mariam appeal. He was never interviewed by the commissioner, who either interviewed or sought to interview every other person who held such positions. Why did he not interview Andrew Murray as part of his inquiry, which was so assiduous, long and complex? Was it because Mr. Murray would have been able, as he did in  The Guardian, to set him right about a few things? I believe that that was the reason. The only alternative reason is incompetence, inefficiency and inattention to detail. I am sure that you would not like me to draw that conclusion, Mr. Speaker.
	I fell out badly with the parliamentary commissioner—very badly. I am going to develop the reasons why, and when I have finished, even if they cannot say so, many hon. Members will be sympathetic to the position in which I found myself. I fell out with the parliamentary commissioner when I read the transcript showing how he fawned on one of the witnesses, Mr. Tony Zureikat—about whom much more later. I am attacked in the report for having criticised Tony Zureikat as a malevolent fantasist. When I have finished bringing to the attention of the House what Mr. Zureikat said, which I demonstrated beyond contradiction to be lies, hon. Members will understand why I described him as a malevolent fantasist. Yet one of the reasons I am being suspended this evening is that I so robustly pursued his lies, and debunked them, to the point that every time I debunked a lie the witness was described by the commissioner more and more as peripheral. "Peripheral" was the word that he used; but it turns out in the end that such witnesses—and there are more—were not peripheral, because they were used as corroborators of the central charge against me, on the subject of the political funding of the Mariam appeal campaign.
	Even more seriously, I fell out with the parliamentary commissioner over the missing part of the transcript of my discussion with him. It turns out that I was right about that, at least if I read correctly the feint—the sleight-of-hand—reference to it in the report. Let me tell you, Sir, what happened. In my meeting with the parliamentary commissioner, the subject of the so-called minute of my meeting with Saddam Hussein in August 2003 was being discussed. I asked for the provenance of that minute. Miss Alda Barry, a civil servant of unimpeachable integrity, whom I have known in this House for 20 years, said that apparently there was a tape recording of the meeting. Yet when I received the transcript there was no reference to a tape recording of the meeting in it. I asked the commissioner over and over again why the reference was not in the transcript. "Why don't you ask," I said, "Miss Barry, a person of unimpeachable honesty, whether she said it, and if she tells you that she said it, why don't you now insert it into the transcript?" Answer came there none. So far as I am aware, Miss Barry was never asked whether she had said what I know she said, what she knows she said, and what the commissioner must know she said. Why was that not in the transcript? I suspect that it was not there because it was not convenient, because there was and is no tape recording. Therefore it was highly inconvenient for a senior civil servant like her to have said that there might be a tape recording of the meeting.
	There is much more of that in the report, when we get to it, but I ask hon. Members honestly to reflect: if something important had been said at a meeting with the parliamentary commissioner where you were the accused, but it was not in the transcript despite your repeatedly asking—accepting that stenographers can make mistakes—that the person who said it should be asked whether she said it, and, if she did, that it should be inserted in the transcript, how would you feel about the person responsible for the omission? I suspect that you would be as angry about it as I am. Yet, as I have said, in the final report it is acknowledged that Miss Barry made the comment—but by sleight of hand, so as in no way to exculpate me of my criticism of the commissioner for its omission. The Committee wants to have its cake and eat it: to set the record straight with an en passant remark that would, if I had not adverted to it this evening, not even have been noticed, but still to condemn me for criticising the commissioner who left the remark out in the first place.
	Even more serious is this: the commissioner said to me, "There was an employee of the Mariam appeal by the name of E. Laing. She was paid £13,000. Do you know who she was?" I said, "No. I have no idea. I've never heard of E. Laing". "Let me put to you", he said, "the suggestion"—although allegation would have been the correct English word, because the suggestion of an illegal act is an allegation—"that E. Laing is your former wife, Elaine Galloway", who happens to be a respected civil servant working in Her Majesty's Treasury across the road. The point was that the name "E. Laing" on a cheque could easily be altered to the name "Elaine Galloway". In other words, the suggestion was that she and I had been involved in what can only be described as a criminal conspiracy to defraud of £13,000.
	When I asked the commissioner who made that suggestion, he said, "I have forgotten". I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and every Member here to search their hearts on this. Does anyone really believe that a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards involved in a four-year investigation of a Member of Parliament can hear a suggestion of criminal behaviour against that Member of Parliament and then forget who made that suggestion? I put it to you that it is impossible that he forgot the person who made that allegation. Only if he was a bungling nincompoop could he have forgotten who made that suggestion or, more properly, allegation. I am sure that you would pull me up if I were to describe Sir Philip as a bungling nincompoop, Mr. Speaker.
	It turned out that E. Laing was the personal assistant of the director of the Mariam appeal, who told the commissioner that he did not know who E. Laing was—I will come to that later. It turned out that E. Laing was paid, perfectly properly, by the director of the Mariam appeal as his personal assistant, but that that was just not the name by which she was commonly known.
	Did the commissioner apologise to me for the suggestion that I had been involved in a criminal fraud? No. Was I irredeemably angry with the commissioner about the episode thereafter? Yes I was, and so would any of you be. If any of you were asked such a question—if any of you were implicitly accused so unjustly and in such a way—you would be as angry about the person who made the allegation as I was. You would be even angrier when he did not have the courage to tell you either who made the suggestion or that he could not have told you the name. That would have been perfectly acceptable. If he had said, "Well I'm not able to divulge the identity of the person who made the suggestion", that would have been a perfectly defensible position. But to claim that he had forgotten who made the suggestion made me very angry indeed.
	The commissioner also ambushed me with documents. He had had two days notice of them before my meeting with the Committee, but he sprung them on me at the meeting in a coup de théâtre—his Perry Mason moment. That made me angry, too.
	Even more serious than anything that I have said so far, however, is that the commissioner claimed that he was involved in an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial inquiry; and yet he refused point blank, over and over again—a refusal endorsed by the Committee—to pursue the existence of forged documents about me that emerged in Baghdad in the very same week and in the very same city, and which passed through the hands of a journalist from the very same newspaper,  The Daily Telegraph. I refer to the forged documents published by  The Christian Science Monitor and almost published by  The Mail on Sunday in England. By the way, Mr. Speaker, those documents looked really authentic. They were on proper headed notepaper, with the right margins and the right terms, and were written in the correct style and signed by the correct people. The documents even almost got it right about my whereabouts vis-à-vis Iraq, on the dates that they suggested that I had gone to lift $20 million personally in cash, corruptly, given to me by two sons of Saddam Hussein. Those documents were very plausible and convincing. They emerged in the same week, in the same city, in the hands of the same newspaper— The Daily Telegraph—that published the infamous stories about me.
	Not only that, but the identity of the man who gave the documents to  The Christian Science Monitor and to  The Mail on Sunday is known. His picture was in the paper and his address is known to our men in Baghdad in the embassy. The commissioner steadfastly refused to inquire as to why that general had either constructed those forgeries himself or passed them on to newspapers and on to Philip Smucker, the journalist concerned—a  Daily Telegraph stringer who worked also for  The Christian Science Monitor.
	I asked the commissioner to send our people from the embassy to interview that general and ask him on whose behalf those forgeries had been produced and why that had been done. The commissioner said that he would not do so, because those forged documents were not in the complaint filed by the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), even though the same commissioner went on, for almost four years, to examine and inquire into practically everything other than Mr. Blaby's complaint.
	I said, "It must be relevant that forgeries about me were produced". We know that they were forgeries. The newspapers concerned accepted that they were forgeries. Harvard university tested the ink on the documents and proved that they there forgeries. That was possible in the case of those documents because, unlike  The Daily Telegraph documents, to which I shall return, they were original documents and not photocopies or, later, faxes. It is inconceivable that a man carrying out an inquisitorial examination of such an important affair would not even try to find out who was responsible for the forgeries against a Member of this House. In fact, it is inconceivable to me that when those forgeries were exposed such a man would not have wanted to know why a Member of this House was the victim of such a conspiracy.
	It is sometimes said, and was said by members of the Committee—I hear them saying it now, sotto voce—"Oh, as far as you're concerned it's just a big conspiracy". But we know that there was a conspiracy. It is not an allegation by me—we know that there was a conspiracy. The documents were published in  The Christian Science Monitor and almost elsewhere—I stopped the presses at the last possible minute, only by giving my passports to the editor of  The Mail on Sunday, for which I then worked, to prove that I could not have been in Iraq on some of the dates on which it was suggested I had lifted that money.
	It is inconceivable that anyone carrying out an inquisitorial investigation would not seek to investigate examples of parallel behaviour, yet the commissioner refused to do so on the utterly fatuous ground that they were not covered by the complaints made by the hon. Member for Blaby. He clung to the credibility of witnesses whom I have proven to be telling lies. He accused me in his report of not co-operating, yet Members who can bear to do so can go through his correspondence with me and not find a single trace of unhappiness on his part about the level of my co-operation. Indeed, as late as the end of last year, he was thanking me, and he was not just grateful, he was "very grateful" for the way in which I was co-operating with him. The truth is that, because they found no evidence of personal gain by me, they switched the goalposts and made an attack on my conduct in defending myself too successfully through the course of this inquiry, driving liars' evidence to the periphery, where they now claim that it rests.
	The commissioner claimed that there was a discrepancy in my account in  The Mail on Sunday of my meeting with Saddam Hussein in August 2003. He had to drop that, once I had drawn to his attention my book, which I had given him on the date of publication, in which I laid out exactly the circumstances of who was present and who was not at my meeting with Saddam Hussein. However, he claimed that there was a discrepancy that never was.
	The commissioner even said that there was a discrepancy in my attitude to the  Telegraph documents, to which I shall return—I told you this was going to have to be a long speech. Those documents were never an issue in the libel case against  The Daily Telegraph. Throughout, the commissioner had more faith in  The Daily Telegraph's documents than  The Daily Telegraph did. If  The Daily Telegraph had had any confidence in its photocopied documents, it would have made them its defence in the trial, but it did not do so because it knew that that would fail. There is no discrepancy at all in how I have described those documents. I said at the time, and I still say now, that those documents are either forgeries or an example of someone corruptly doing business in Iraq behind my back, without my knowledge and using my name. I say, as I said on the first day, that there is no discrepancy here. I said on the first day that, whatever the case, whoever produced the documents, whenever they produced them and for whatever reason, the information in them is false. There is no discrepancy in that at all.

Simon Hughes: One of the issues that came up during the investigation, which I had not known before, was that there was a power for the hon. Gentleman to ask that the commissioner should not investigate alone before the matter went to the Committee, and that an investigatory panel comprising the commissioner, a lawyer and a senior Member of the House should do the job, possibly to give a bit more authority to the investigation. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us whether he considered using that process and, if he did, why he rejected it? It seems to me that it would have been a worthwhile initiative for him to take, because it would have brought some independence from this building to the investigation.

George Galloway: That is exactly the point to which I shall now turn. In fact, the power to do that lies with the commissioner, who may do it, or with the Committee. If the Committee asks the commissioner to do that, he must do it. There is no power on my part to insist on such a panel. Perhaps there ought to be.
	As I said at the beginning, I am being suspended for 18 days, and the Committee has singled this issue out because I described it as a politicised tribunal. Of course it is a politicised tribunal. How could it be anything other, when it is composed of politicians? It is po-faced, pompous and preposterous to ask the public to believe—as the Chairman of the Committee asked me to believe—that the individual politicians on the Committee leave their politics at the door. That flies in the face of everything that we know about ourselves, and of all the history of the existence of this Committee— [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members shake their heads. I shall have to educate them with some recent examples. Perhaps they were not here at the time. My problem is that I have been here for a long time and have an elephantine memory. I remember when the very considerable brain of Mr. Willetts—forgive me, I forget his constituency—[Hon. Members: "Havant"] I remember when the very considerable brain of Mr. Havant, when he was a Government Whip, revealed that the Tory Members of the Standards and Privileges Committee had wanted the Whips' advice. Because he is so clever, his defence was: "No, it was not that they wanted our advice. They were in want of our advice as they proceeded with the business in front of them."
	Then there is the matter of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid) and the former Member for Cathcart, our old friend, now Lord Maxton. They appeared in front of this politicised tribunal, but they were lucky. The politicised tribunal trying their case threw out the parliamentary commissioner's findings using the ingenious device of changing the burden of proof that should have been applied to the allegations against them. That parliamentary commissioner, Miss Filkin, then got the sack for having had the temerity to take on the powerful. I predict that the current commissioner will not get the sack. In fact, he has just been promoted. I do not know where you go from being a knight of the realm; perhaps he can get elevated to the House of Lords without having to make a campaign contribution. But Miss Filkin got the sack because she prosecuted the case against the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts and the former Member for Cathcart in a way that the politicised tribunal of Members of Parliament did not like, and every person in here knows that that is true.
	Even if the Committee were composed of saints—we will see in a minute just how short of sainthood some of them are—they would, by definition, be party political saints. I had no friends on the Committee. I am the sole Member of Parliament for my party. I said that this was a politicised tribunal, Mr. Speaker, and you know that I mean it when I say it. I swear before God that this is true: I made the comment about this politicised tribunal before I had even looked to see who the members of the tribunal were. Once I knew who they were—

Andrew Robathan: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Galloway: I am being ambushed! You crept up behind me. I am coming to you in a minute.

Andrew Robathan: There is an issue here, because I understand that a conspiracy is afoot. Will the hon. Gentleman just tell me whether I am part of that conspiracy, as I would really like to know?

George Galloway: I am coming to you in just a minute—not you, of course, Mr. Speaker. I suppose I have to call him the hon. Gentleman—he has sneaked up on me. [Interruption.] You were sitting over there the last time I looked. I warn the hon. Gentleman that just because there is a lot of him and not many of me, he need not think I am outnumbered. Short-sword fighting is my speciality—believe me. I never made it into the armed forces, but I can handle the hon. Member for Blaby. No one should worry about that.
	Once I looked at who was on the Committee on Standards and Privileges, I could not believe my eyes. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) was one of them—a fanatical supporter of Israel, against which I have fought all my political life. Is it really true that he left his politics at the door when he was judging me? Does anybody really believe that?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that on many occasions Members have had to gather together to look at a case independently and when they do so, they leave their private and political views behind them. Whatever organisation the hon. Member for Hendon supports is irrelevant. The hon. Gentleman seems to be encroaching on saying that there was motivation other than the evidence of the case being put before the Committee. The hon. Gentleman cannot say that because the hon. Member for Hendon is a supporter of the state of Israel, he did not give a fair hearing to the case, based on the evidence put before him.

George Galloway: Why can I not say that if that is what I believe? Why can I not say that I believe I was treated unjustly by this Committee and provide the reasons why that is the case?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will tell the hon. Gentleman why. In a less heated situation, I would not allow anyone to attack the honour of an hon. Member—and I cannot allow it in this situation either. The support that the hon. Member for Hendon gives to the state of Israel or any other political view he expresses is perfectly legitimate: he is quite entitled to hear a case on the Standards and Privileges Committee.

George Galloway: The point I am trying to make, Mr. Speaker, is that the Chairman's claim that members of the Committee leave their politics at the door is unsustainable. I can tell you that the hon. Member for Hendon used to heckle me when I was making speeches on his own side. He used to heckle me during my speeches, even though we were members of the same party. In any sane system—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have known many members of the same party to heckle the hon. Gentleman. I have already said that I have known him for 30 years. That is what happens—and the hon. Member for Hendon is not alone in that respect. The hon. Gentleman has questioned his motives, but the hon. Member for Hendon is an hon. Member who is entitled to sit on a Committee that takes evidence—it is an evidence-taking Committee—and he would do so in an impartial manner.

George Galloway: Well, that may be true in theory; but it is my case that it is not true in practice—and it could not be so, because we are politicians. It is not credible—I mean literally incredible and it will be seen by the public as incredible—that this Committee will deal impartially with someone who is regarded, particularly on the Labour side, as a heretic and who was expelled from the Labour party for political reasons and who leads a party whose councillors took seats from the Labour party. Indeed, I defeated the Labour party in an electoral campaign into which the Labour party threw everything, including the kitchen sink. The Labour party is much preoccupied with which Labour Minister I am going to stand against at the next election. All I can tell you is that he is in the building right now. The idea that Labour people could be unbiased about me in all those circumstances is ridiculous. It is true only in theory, Mr. Speaker, that someone who is as passionately in favour of Israel as I am against it would leave their politics at the door.
	Another example is the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), with whom I battled for years regarding his role, in tandem with Robert Maxwell, in the setting up and smearing of Arthur Scargill—president of the union of which I am an honorary member and the right hon. Gentleman is an expelled member. The idea that all that would be left at the door is ridiculous. When Tam Dalyell and I were trying to expose Roger Windsor, the British intelligence agent in Arthur Scargill's office during the attempt to smear him, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley was Maxwell's man, who could be found here actually selling books at half price from his parliamentary office. The idea that he could be—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going too far.  [Interruption.] Order. The noise in the Chamber does not help when I am trying to speak to these matters. The hon. Gentleman is making personal attacks on members of the Committee. That is wrong and I cannot allow it. The hon. Gentleman may complain that I have interfered too much, but I promise that I will not interfere again if he gets back to the report before us, rather than the personalities of individual members of the Committee.

George Galloway: But on the subject of personal attacks, Mr. Speaker, I am the one who is being personally attacked and I am only trying to defend myself.

Mr. Speaker: Order. What I am seeking to do is to help the hon. Gentleman. If he feels that he is being attacked, it is via this report. If he speaks to the report and rebuts it, I can assist him in every way, but attacking hon. Gentlemen on the basis of who they are connected with or what books they are promoting is something that I cannot allow. If the hon. Gentleman intends to go through every individual member of the Committee on Standards and Privileges and do the same thing, let me tell him that I cannot allow it.

George Galloway: Of course, I hear what you say, Mr. Speaker. Having dealt with the hon. Member for Hendon and the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, I will leave this line of argument—or particular seam that I have been mining—at that. I think that the public know the truth about these issues and if they do not, they can read Seamus Milne's masterpiece, "The Enemy Within", about the miners' dispute, who was who and who did what in it. I have been a proud member of the National Union of Mineworkers—south Wales area, Mardy lodge—these last 25 years. I am very proud of that, which is one of the reasons why the right hon. Member for Rother Valley and I do not get along very well.
	A politicised tribunal is what I say it was, Mr. Speaker. If it were not a politicised tribunal, why did I learn of its establishment from the media rather than from the parliamentary commissioner or the Member who made the complaint? That Member was on my left a few minutes ago, but he has now disappeared. I predict that he will pop up somewhere over there any minute now. I hope so, at least, as I have much to say about him.
	I learned of the existence of this inquiry from the media and I learned of its conclusions from the media. I did not need to wait for the Chairman's report, which was published on the Tuesday, because I read it on the front page of  The Sunday Times on the Sunday. Given the closeness of new Labour to Mr. Murdoch and  The Sunday Times—the sewer of choice for so many such things—I knew that it must be true.
	Apparently, it is not a politicised tribunal, but a Committee on Standards and Privileges, yet it is so unconcerned about the breach of privilege implicit in that lack of standards that an hon. Member being inquired into learns of his fate from the newspapers. When I wrote to the Chairman complaining about the leak, he answered me without even referring to that leak, so unconcerned was he at that fact that his Committee of non-politicians, his unpolitical campaign, his depoliticised Committee leaked the conclusions of this inquiry to  The Sunday Times before it had time to publish the report. And you ask me to believe that that is not politically motivated! Mr. Speaker, what other motivation could there have been for these 10 pristine Gentlemen, as I must now refer to them—what reason could there have been for one or more of these 10 paragons of virtue and honour—leaking the conclusion of this report, other than a political reason?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know that it is difficult for the hon. Gentleman, but once again he is questioning the honour of members of our Standards and Privileges Committee and makes an accusation that a leak came from one of them. That is not necessarily the case. My experience in Parliament is that many, many people have their eyes on documents. What I am trying to say is that it could go beyond the members of the Committee. I am not making any accusations, but the situation of the leak, which I deprecate, does not allow the hon. Gentleman to question the honour of the individual members of our Committee.

George Galloway: Mr. Speaker, you began these proceedings by saying that you would protect me, but every time you have been on your feet it has been to protect the Committee or the Parliamentary Commissioner. If I had said that the leak had come from a civil servant, you would, on the basis of your previous intervention, have told me that I must not impugn the integrity of a civil servant. Now that I am saying that I believe the leak came—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The best thing that the hon. Gentleman can do is not to seek to twist the words that I have used. I am in a difficult situation today, and I am trying to help and assist the hon. Gentleman to put his case, but he must abide by the rules that I have been given. He cannot question my judgment on the case that I put—that the motivation of hon. Members of this House should not be questioned in the way that he is questioning it.

George Galloway: I am really at a loss, Mr. Speaker. The report was leaked on the front page of  The Sunday Times: ergo, somebody leaked it. Based on what you have said, I may not impugn the integrity of a civil servant and I must not allege that one of the Committee members leaked it. That only leaves the printers. Is it all right to impugn their integrity? I tell you candidly: not only do I believe—not only does any sensible person believe—that it was neither the printers nor the civil servants who leaked it, but I believe that it was leaked for political reasons by a Committee that you are asking me to accept is non-political.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to give a warning to the hon. Gentleman. He is defying my ruling and is very close to being named. This I do not want to do, but this is what he is doing: he is defying my ruling, and he will be named if he wishes, as he says, to seek to mine this particular seam. I urge him not to do so, to move on and to get back to the report.

George Galloway: Of course I must obey your ruling, Mr. Speaker, because I do not want to be named because I do not want to be thrown out of the House an hour or two before I am going to be thrown out of the House anyway. We all know that that is what is going to happen.
	I said that I was a short-sword fighter, but I am a short-sword fighter in Spartacus's army. It is Caesar's legions gathered here tonight who are going to expel me from the House. Everybody knows that that is true. Everybody knows that I am going to be expelled from the House this evening— [Interruption.] Some say, "Get on with it." I am trying to get on with my case, but I am not having as much success with this audience as I suspect I may be having beyond these walls—

Andrew Robathan: I doubt it.

George Galloway: I have spent 10 hours on live phone-in radio this week, in front of hundreds of thousands of listeners— [Interruption.] My pay is in the Register of Members' Interests—I thought the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) was a friend of mine; it appears that he has joined the legions.
	There were 10 hours of live radio, with hundreds of thousands of listeners, and I am here to tell you, in case you do not know, Mr. Speaker, that this report has sunk like a stone and has no credibility among the general public. It is popular in here, I can tell, but it has no credibility among the general public, in part because they suspect that which I am trying to prove to them, if I am able to develop my case.
	I am not able to say who leaked the report, Mr. Speaker, because of your ruling and your threat to name me, so I can only say this: it was leaked. I wrote to the Chairman of the Committee complaining about the leak. He replied to me without reference to the fact that it had been leaked. I then replied to him to say how outrageous it was that he had not even referred to the leak, at which point he wrote to me again saying, "I am instituting an inquiry into the leak." But of course the story was leaked on the Sunday before polling day in a by-election in which my party was a contestant.
	I just ask you this, and ask you and other Members, Mr. Speaker, to answer it honestly in their hearts: would this Committee have published such a report against the leader of the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat parties two days before polling day in a by-election in London? Every one of you knows that it would not. A kind of freemasonry would apply, and we know about that, Mr. Speaker, you and me— [Laughter.] Of course we know it as victims, not as practitioners of those black arts; we know it as those who have been on the end of their discrimination and bigotry. Does anyone really believe that if this report had been about the leaders of the other parties represented on the Committee, it would have been published two days before polling day? You all know in your hearts that it would not, and it would not therefore have been leaked on the Sunday before polling day.
	Now, Mr. Speaker, you will be glad to know that I intend to move on to the report. I warn the House that I have even more to say about that. I am going to start with—I suppose I must call him the hon. Gentleman—the hon. Member for Blaby, on my left, who is moving around the House on manoeuvres, you might say. It was the hon. Gentleman who made the complaint against me. I have here the letter with which he made the complaint:
	"Further to our telephone conversation this afternoon, I note that you have yet to receive a request to investigate the extremely serious allegations made by the Daily Telegraph against George Galloway MP.
	Since serving in the last Gulf war in 1991, I have been very interested in the situation in Iraq ever since"—
	I apologise for his English. He is a soldier. I merely left school at 17, like you, Mr. Speaker, to go and work in a factory—

Ken Purchase: The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) attended public school; you have got to excuse his English.

George Galloway: Public school education can do that to your facility with the English language.

Andrew Robathan: Get on with it!

George Galloway: No wonder he wants to draw a veil over this English, which is now enshrined for ever in the history of this Parliament.
	The letter says:
	"Since serving in the last Gulf war"—
	I cannot resist reading it again—
	"For a couple of years I was on the Board of Ann Clwyd's organisation "INDICT" and there met a lot of Iraqi opposition figures."
	There are many new Members in the House, Mr. Speaker, so let me tell them about the organisation Indict. Indict was a political campaign to indict the former leaders of Iraq. It was foreign-funded to the tune of millions of dollars by the United States Government.

Bob Spink: That's all right, then.

George Galloway: "That's all right, then," as the hon. Gentleman says. The organisation was funded to the tune of millions of dollars from the United States Government. The complainant was a member of it. There, he met a lot of Iraqi opposition figures. It operated from this House. Parliamentary facilities, I surmise, were used by its members—their offices and telephones. I do not know if the computer was invented then, but perhaps their faxes were used—and perfectly properly, as these were hon. Members engaged in a political campaign that happened to be foreign-funded to the tune of millions of dollars.
	I am more interested in the Iraqi opposition figures that the hon. Gentleman met therein. Who might those Iraqi opposition figures have been? Let us speculate.

Andrew Robathan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. For clarification, when I was a member of the board of Indict, we had premises somewhere in south Lambeth—I cannot remember exactly where—and it was—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order, but a matter for debate. The hon. Gentleman might catch my eye later—some time later, by the sound of it.

George Galloway: The verbal facility of the hon. Member for Blaby is not even as good as his written facility.
	I do not why anyone would want to deny it; everybody here knows that MPs use parliamentary resources for political campaigns. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase), whom I respect very much, sent me a document this week in the internal post every word of which I agree with, and which I wholeheartedly support, on the campaign against city academies. I hope I have not got him into trouble. Everybody in here knows that every Member involved in a political campaign uses parliamentary facilities in part, whether they have an office somewhere in south Lambeth or not.

Andrew Robathan: We did not.

George Galloway: The hon. Gentleman says that they did not. Are we really expected to believe that he never once used the telephone, the photocopier, a meeting room or his own office in pursuit of his campaign?

Ann Clwyd: indicated dissent.

George Galloway: The right hon. Lady shakes her head; that is even more extraordinary. She was the chairman of Indict. If she is going to claim that Indict never once used parliamentary facilities, I will risk being named by you, Mr. Speaker, because no one in their right mind could believe that the campaign that the right hon. Lady led for years never once used parliamentary facilities in pursuit of its objectives.

Ann Clwyd: I simply want to put the record straight. Indict was an organisation funded not just by the Americans but by other countries. Indict employed six, sometimes seven, full-time people and had an office directly across the river that was staffed throughout a seven-year period. I would ask the hon. Gentleman not to repeat that untruth; it was not run from the House of Commons.

George Galloway: I am more grateful for that intervention than the right hon. Lady can imagine. It now turns out that the organisation of which the complainant was a member was funded not by one foreign country but by several, and so handsomely that it could afford to employ seven people in an office just across the river. How extraordinary that is.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know that it is difficult for the hon. Gentleman, who is frowning. I have a difficult job this evening, but I say to him that it is one thing to mention an organisation in passing, but he is now entering into a full-blown debate about the organisation. We should get back to the report.

George Galloway: This is a question of double standards. It is about the fact that I am being thrown out of the House for running a campaign about Iraq that sometimes used parliamentary facilities and was funded by foreigners. It is based on a complaint by a member of an organisation that campaigned about Iraq, undoubtedly used from time to time some parliamentary facilities, and was funded by not one but several foreign countries. That is my point: the double standards give rise to the injustice. I had not intended to spend as much time on the organisation Indict, but two members of it have intervened, which has expanded what I had to say on this subject.
	My real point is not about Indict, but about the Iraqi opposition figures that the hon. Member for Blaby was hanging out with during his time across the river in Lambeth with the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and Indict. Let us speculate on who these Iraqi opposition figures might be. Might they be the Iraqi opposition figures that put us into so much trouble in the run-up to the war? Might they be the Iraqi opposition figures who fabricated and forged their way into this House, the White House, Congress and Whitehall with their canards that have led us to the pass that we are in, and which we cannot avoid discussing this evening? Might they be the Iraqi opposition figures—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know it is difficult for the hon. Gentleman to take a telling, but he must get back to the report. He is entering into the detail of an organisation called Indict and he is not allowed to do so. He must obey my ruling.

George Galloway: So you keep saying; having told me you would protect me, we are now getting to the stage where you are going to have to throw me out of Parliament prematurely because—
	 The hon. Member, having wilfully disregarded the authority of the Chair, was named by Mr. Speaker,  pursuant to Standing Order No. 43 (Disorderly conduct).
	 Ordered,
	That Mr. George Galloway be suspended from the service of the House— [ Ms Harman . ]
	 Question again proposed.

George Young: Let me begin by dispersing some of the smokescreen that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) constructed as he sought to divert attention from the issue that is at the heart of the debate and that appears on the front of the report: the conduct of the hon. Gentleman.
	Let me make one thing absolutely clear. As fellow parliamentarians, we defend absolutely the right of free speech. We said as much in our report; as far as we are concerned, the hon. Gentleman has the right to hold and express his views and use any legitimate means to pursue them. That applies as much to his views on sanctions as it does on anything else. He has stated that my Committee is pro-sanctions and pro-war. As a matter of fact, of the nine members who signed the report, five voted in favour of the war and four did not.
	The hon. Gentleman further asserted that he is being suspended because he robustly defended himself. Not so. The problem with his defence was not that it was robust; it was that it was not credible. He has accused us of being a kangaroo court composed of his political opponents, incapable of reaching an objective conclusion. As an aside, one member of the Committee is a Welsh nationalist, a party that has no ambitions on Bethnal Green and Bow.
	What the Committee does mind about is our duty to maintain the reputation of the House. Nothing could more damage that reputation than if a Committee of this House were to dispense summary justice in a partisan manner to settle political scores. None of us will be complicit in that, least of all—if I may say so, and without wishing to embarrass him—the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), who has a justified reputation for championing the causes of those who have been wrongly accused. It would, however, damage the House's reputation if we were to fail to uphold our own rules and code of conduct. We have addressed this case objectively and impartially—as we have addressed all cases since I became a Committee member.
	The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow has asserted that since he has
	"been cleared of taking a single penny or in any way personally benefiting from the former Iraqi regime"
	the complaint should fail. What the commissioner actually said—and what the Committee endorsed—was that no evidence had emerged from the inquiry that shows whether the hon. Gentleman has
	"directly and personally, unlawfully received monies from the former Iraqi regime".
	The commissioner did, however, find clear evidence that his former wife, with whom he shared a joint account, had received two substantial sums from the oil for food programme.
	Where the money for the Mariam appeal came from and where it ended up is of interest to the House. This is not a debate about party political funding, as the hon. Gentleman maintains. It is about openness, accountability and integrity, and it is also about our rules on advocacy. We know that the hon. Gentleman was, by his own admission, in charge of the Mariam campaign and that that was, in his words,
	"a campaigning organisation campaigning for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq."
	We know that it had total resources of £1.4 million, only a fraction of which was used for the treatment of Mariam herself. The central issue before us is: when the hon. Gentleman argued in this Chamber against sanctions on Iraq, did he know—and therefore was the House entitled to know—that the vehicle for that campaign was funded in part by Saddam Hussein? The evidence led us to the conclusion that the hon. Gentleman solicited the funds, was instrumental in securing them, directed their expenditure and was complicit in trying to conceal their true origin. Let me briefly explain how the commissioner and the Committee reached that conclusion.
	I should first put on record our thanks to the commissioner for his painstaking work, and state that I bitterly resent the hon. Gentleman's gratuitous and offensive attack on him. This inquiry was the longest running, and probably one of the most complex, ever undertaken by any commissioner. A number of unusual features contributed to the complexity: the overlap with the interests of other bodies, such as the Volcker committee and the Charity Commission; the foreign dimension; the difficulty in authenticating documents; language issues; and unobtainable witnesses. I am also grateful to the Committee. It has discussed the case on five separate occasions for a total of between nine and 10 hours and has reached a unanimous conclusion.
	At the heart of the debate are the so-called  Telegraph documents. Their discovery led to the articles that gave rise to the complaint, and their authenticity and credibility was the key question we had to answer. What did the documents say? They are printed in full on pages 8 to 11 of volume II of the report, and I shall quote extracts referring to reports of meetings that concern the hon. Gentleman. First, the intelligence chief's memorandum says that the hon. Gentleman's
	"projects and future plans for the benefit of the country need financial support to become a motive for him to do more work and because of the sensitivity of getting money directly from Iraq it is necessary to grant him oil contracts...his only representative on all matters relating to the Mariam Campaign is Mr. Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat and the two partners have agreed that financial and commercial matters should be done by"
	Zureikat
	"with emphasis that the name of Mr. Galloway or his wife should not be mentioned later...Therefore he needs continuous financial support from Iraq...he suggested to us the following...first increase his share of oil."
	A later document, known as the Tariq Aziz memorandum, states:
	"We send you attached a translation of the work programme for the year 2000 which was submitted by Member of Parliament George Galloway and cleared by the President's office".
	A translation of the presidential response gives an order that the hon. Gentleman's request be studied:
	"But the belief is that the person who is promoting the right path, even using western methods, needs exceptional support which we cannot afford."
	The final document is the Izzat Ibrahim document. It recommends:
	"continuing the co-operation with George Galloway about the oil contracts and other commercial contracts...It is better not to engage the Mukhabarat"—
	the Iraqi intelligence service—
	"in the relationship with George Galloway, as he has been a well known politician since 1990 and discovery with the Mukhabarat would damage him very much."
	If true, those documents have serious implications both for the hon. Gentleman and the House. My Committee and the commissioner have seen the documents in their entirety—all 2,500-plus pages of them. The hon. Gentleman has chosen not to do so, despite a range of opportunities during both the libel proceedings and our own inquiry.
	The hon. Gentleman denounces the documents as fakes or forgeries. Let us examine that proposition. He asserts that some, or possibly all, of the  Telegraph documents were not found in the burnt-out Foreign Ministry building in Baghdad, as the journalist David Blair described in sworn testimony during the libel proceedings and confirmed in evidence to the commissioner, and as has been independently confirmed by other witnesses. Instead, the hon. Gentleman asserts that they were handed to David Blair by agents of our intelligence service. On that scenario, those behind his alleged plot would have needed not only to have operated a shadow office over a period of some four years to create 2,500 documents of the wide-ranging appearance found by Mr. Blair, but also somehow to have stolen the various original documents in the files without arousing any suspicion from the Iraqi authorities who held them. This incredibly sophisticated, dangerous and expensive exercise would have been undertaken by the very agency whose energies at the time were primarily focused on a search to discover whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The House might agree that that seems to be a wholly disproportionate effort for our security forces to have expended to silence a Back Bencher, however troublesome.
	The other proposition advanced by the hon. Gentleman is that the shadow office that produced the fakes or forgeries might have been run by someone within the then Iraqi regime, but that is even more far-fetched. Is it likely that at a time when the country faced the imminent threat of invasion so much resource would have been committed at the highest level to a plot using extraordinarily skilful forgery techniques, to bring down one of the few friends the then regime had—and a plot whose ultimate success, undertaken for motives never explained, depended on Mr. Blair or some other inquisitive journalist happening to come across the documents among a mass of files on the floor of one room in one specific Iraqi Government building following a successful coalition invasion, assuming of course that they survived the process? I have seen all the documents in the files—the several originals as well as the copies, including documents certified as true by the hon. Gentleman, and all the many post-it notes and annotations in Arabic on them, and the careful indexing—and I and the Committee were struck by the sheer implausibility of the forgery or fake theory.
	We then addressed the alternative theory: that the documents were authentic. We went to some trouble to do so. Mr. Oliver Thorne, the head of the questioned documents group at LGC, a leading forensic science firm, and also the man originally instructed by the hon. Gentleman's legal representatives in his libel action against  The Daily Telegraph, was asked to conduct a forensic analysis of the documents. His conclusions are to be found at document 32 in volume II of our report. They are as unequivocal as any careful scientist is likely to be. Mr. Thorne found that neither the possibility that all the documents are forged, nor the possibility that some forged documents were later seeded among genuine ones, is at all credible. In short, the hon. Gentleman's various accounts of the origin of the  Telegraph documents are not underpinned either by the evidence or by expert opinion. Indeed, as he admitted when he gave oral evidence to us—an exchange that was more productive than that with the Senate sub-committee—even he could not give us a reason why we should have preferred his version of events. He promised us proof of his case, but never provided it. He mentioned to the commissioner that he had information of nuclear importance. That information turned out to be a damp squib. So the commissioner and the Committee were driven to the conclusion that the documents were authentic and that the story they told was credible. I am not saying that every fact in every document is accurate, but—putting all the evidence carefully assembled by the commissioner together—a coherent, plausible and convincing sequence of events emerges.

Simon Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why the Committee felt that it was able to come to its views on, I understand, a balance of probabilities, rather than the stiffer test that has been used in some other deliberations by the Committee?

George Young: The commissioner, in his report, sets out why he chose the balance of probabilities. Unless one is involved in a criminal case, that is the criterion that is normally used, and it is the one that we used. Having said that, if I had to put the case on a spectrum, it would have been more than just the balance of probabilities. The Committee would take the view that it was nearer the top end than the middle end.
	Our conclusion was underpinned by two further considerations. First, it was underpinned by other evidence. For example, the allocations by the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation on page 75 of volume I show allocations in the name of the Mariam campaign, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow and Mr. Zureikat. There was evidence from the United Nations that the oil allocated in those names had been lifted. All that and much other circumstantial evidence pointed to the conclusion that the hon. Member's campaign against sanctions through the Mariam appeal was in effect supported for a substantial period by the former Iraqi regime, through Mr. Fawaz Zureikat and the oil for food programme. As the commissioner concluded, he chose at best to ignore what was going on, but more probably was complicit in it.
	The second consideration was the translation of the minute of the hon. Member's meeting with Saddam Hussein on 8 August 2002, to be found on pages 61 to 65 of volume II. That was not one of the  Telegraph documents. The hon. Member is reported as saying:
	"Mr Tariq Aziz has helped us with his contacts and has used his influence to facilitate our job and facilitate the mechanism by which we have been able to obtain the funding necessary to finance our activities. But we are now suffering from the problem of the price of oil which has resulted in a reduction in our income and delay in receiving our dues."
	The hon. Member has applied the same conspiracy theory to that document, whose provenance is explained in appendix 3 to volume I of our report, and has denied that that interview was ever recorded. However, as the appendix shows, we received credible evidence that the so-called private meetings with the President were routinely recorded and transcribed. The Committee concluded that this was important independent confirmation of the story that emerged from the Telegraph documents.
	The hon. Member sought to portray himself as a passive spectator, neither knowing nor even asking where funds for the Mariam appeal came from. The House may well ask whether that was a wise stance for any hon. Member to take in circumstances in which £1.4 million was levered in largely to support campaigning for one of that Member's political objectives. All the evidence, however, points in the opposite direction. The hon. Member was an active player on the field—complicit in the procuring of the funds and in covering up their provenance. In so doing, he deceived the public and he deceived this House.
	I turn now to one other aspect of the hon. Member's conduct that concerned the Committee—his habit of blackening the names of those who gave evidence against him. Using parliamentary privilege, the hon. Member in effect accused David Blair of perjury. In his Adjournment debate on 8 May 2006, he said that the claim
	"that Mr. Blair was not led to those documents but had merely chanced upon them while wandering around a looted and burning building, and that he had found all of the documents published by the  Telegraph in the same place, at the same time and in the same box, is quite simply a lie."—[ Official Report, 8 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 144.]
	If the hon. Member was right, and his assertion had been proved to the relevant standard, David Blair could have gone to prison.
	In the same debate, he attributed a claim to another journalist—Philip Sherwell of  The Sunday Telegraph—which, if true, would have undermined Mr. Blair's story. When approached by the commissioner, however, Mr. Blair insisted that everything the hon. Member had said about him was untrue. Mr. Sherwell said that his comments had been misrepresented during the hon. Member's contribution to the Adjournment debate. The commissioner asked, as did we, the hon. Member for evidence to substantiate the serious allegations he had made about the integrity of Mr. Blair. He never provided it. He relied in making those allegations on second-hand evidence that he claimed to have received from another journalist whose name he has consistently declined to provide in a way that would enable anyone to attempt to corroborate his story.
	The hon. Member has asserted on several occasions that we should award him a medal for his part in these events. That action was the action not of a hero, but of a bully. As the Committee pointed out, the hon. Member has given inconsistent evidence on a number of occasions in the course of this inquiry—including on important points such as whether he was ever a signatory of a Mariam appeal bank account. So he himself has failed to observe the standards that he demanded of others.
	The hon. Member finally accepted in oral evidence to the Committee last month, that it would have been wiser to have registered the Mariam appeal, and individual donations above the registration threshold. He also accepted, and apologised to us for, his failure consistently to observe his obligations to declare his interest in the Mariam appeal. The Committee also felt that the extent to which resources provided by the House at public expense to assist the hon. Member in discharging his parliamentary duties were used to run the Mariam appeal was excessive.
	The hon. Member's partial apology for those more technical offences, although welcome, does not address the seriousness of the overall charges against him. The manner of his dealings with the Iraqi Government was such as to lead him to breach the advocacy rule and the Nolan principles of openness, honesty and accountability. That is why my Committee is recommending more than the apology to the House that the more technical offences alone would warrant. The hon. Member has fundamentally and consistently fallen short in a number of important respects of the specific standards the House expects of its Members. Perhaps most seriously of all, despite the lengthy inquiry, the overwhelming weight of the evidence and the unanimous judgment of colleagues drawn from four political parties, he still remains trapped in a fantasy world of conspiracies and victimisation for his political beliefs.
	Today marks the end of an inquiry that began more than four years ago. It has been the subject of the most exhaustive and painstaking inquiry ever undertaken by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is entirely independent of the political process. His findings that the hon. Member has consistently denied, prevaricated and fudged in relation to the now undeniable evidence that the Mariam appeal—and he indirectly through it—received money derived, via the oil for food programme, from the former Iraqi regime, have been upheld unanimously by a Committee that has interviewed the hon. Member, seen the evidence and cross-examined the expert witness.
	The hon. Member is entitled to defend himself vigorously. What has sunk him is not his vigour, his oratory or his views. What has sunk him is the evidence. Neither he nor any other Member is entitled to abuse the privilege of free speech in this Chamber to malign those outside this House, to distort and manipulate the facts to suit his argument in an attempt to mislead the House and the public or to breach the integrity of the House's conduct arrangements while doing so. We have recommended to the House a response, which lies on the Order Paper, that we believe to be fair and proportionate. I invite the House to endorse it.

Kevin Barron: I shall be brief because I do not have much to add to the contribution of the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, on which I have sat since the general election of 2005, in terms of the conduct of the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway). I wish to put into context his case for the defence. He brought up an event that occurred in 1990, when I spoke out having read an internal report of the National Union of Mineworkers about the misapplication of funds by its then president, Arthur Scargill. As a consequence of my speaking out and the internal report, nearly £750,000 was returned to the NUM, although many millions of pounds remain today in foreign bank accounts. I know not what will become of that.
	I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman brought that issue up. He suggested that I was some sort of emissary of Robert Maxwell. I met Robert Maxwell on two occasions, when I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition in the 1980s, and that was probably two occasions more than I would have wished to meet him. I have never been his mouthpiece, nor indeed anybody's mouthpiece, in this place, and it is not worthy to make such a case for the defence. It is a great shame that the hon. Gentleman is not here to hear that.
	None of us goes away without being touched by events when we are on Committees. I chair the Select Committee on Health, and Committee members are touched by events, by witnesses' accounts and by the evidence that is given. Some of the case for the defence that we have heard today is not credible—it never has been—and I would urge hon. Members to read the evidence that was put before the Committee before reaching the conclusion that it was credible.
	The hon. Gentleman brought in a series of events that had little to do with how we found against him in the report and what we found. The standard of proof was the right one, because the Committee is not a criminal court. This case does raise issues in relation to the criminal court, which those who investigate criminal matters ought perhaps to look at, but that is certainly not something that the Standards and Privileges Committee did, and nor did the commissioner—he does not work to that level. No matter what the standard of proof, however, there was no question but that the hon. Gentleman had got money indirectly from the oil for food programme, and I do not think that anybody can question that, given the evidence before us in the report. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman solicited that money from Mr. Zureikat—not Tony Zureikat, and I would agree with some of the hon. Gentleman's analysis of him as an individual—but Fawaz, his brother, which was a different thing altogether—[Hon. Members: "Cousin."] Sorry, his cousin. Fawaz Zureikat had a note of introduction from the hon. Gentleman so that he could go to Iraq and do the business as far as the Mariam appeal was concerned.
	As the Chairman said, the hon. Gentleman said on two occasions that he was wrong not to register, and he clearly should have done that. However, although he said that he felt that he was wrong on two occasions, he has not done so since the report was published last Tuesday and he has not done so again in the House today. The Committee's recommendation, which is before the House today, is that he apologise to the House and be suspended from its service for 18 sitting days. I have not yet heard whether we will get to vote on the 18 days now, but I would genuinely like to think that the hon. Gentleman will come to terms with the House and how it protects people's freedom of speech. It has protected mine in the past and it will protect his if what he says is well intended, although I do not think that that we are there yet as far as he is concerned.

Andrew Dismore: I do not usually speak in debates such as this, although I am a member of the Committee. However, in the light of the attacks mounted by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway), I think that I ought to say a few words.
	First, the commissioner had the patience of an absolute saint, given the terrible provocations that he was subject to during the inquiry. I have the utmost respect for the way in which he rose above them and conducted himself with complete dignity and objectivity in producing his report.
	I should also like to say something about my Committee colleagues. Our Committee is set up with no party in the majority. It is chaired by an Opposition Member to try to ensure that we have a fair balance. The implication of what the hon. Gentleman says is that he should be tried by a Committee of his friends and, indeed, that any of us should be tried by a Committee of friends. That is not how it should be; the proceedings should be objective.
	When I was first appointed to the Committee six years ago—I think that I am the longest-serving member of the Committee along with our Chair—I did not volunteer, but had my arm twisted. I was told that the Committee wanted lawyers because we could be seen to be objective and would follow the evidence because that is what we were trained to do. I am not surprised by the personal attack that we saw today, because it is typical of the hon. Gentleman's bullying style. However, he seems to want to deny me my right to free speech and to speak for Israel in the House, while at the same time claiming his right to speak for Iraq—a right that I am prepared to defend, even if he is not prepared to defend my right to free speech, as our report says.
	It is typical of the hon. Gentleman that he uses parliamentary privilege to smear those with whom he disagrees—whether it is a  Telegraph journalist or those of us in the House—with allegations of bias, such as those against me. However, I would simply say one thing. Over the years that I have been on the Committee, we have had to decide many cases involving Members from both sides of the House, including from my own party. As a whole, members of the Committee tend to be harder on those from their own side than on those from the other side, even when we sometimes find ourselves having to judge those whom we might regard as friends. The fact is that I approached this case no differently from any other on which I have sat, and there have been quite a few. We follow the evidence, we follow the precedent and we go where the evidence takes us, as with the strong evidence in this case and the huge files of documents that we saw and examined in detail, with the benefit of expert advice and opinion—documents that the hon. Gentleman could not be bothered to view himself. We put our party politics and personal views to one side and make our views known, and our decision is made on the basis of the evidence. That is what we did in this case.

Simon Hughes: These are always difficult debates for this place, Mr. Speaker, and as you evidenced, they are difficult for the Chair. We respect and understand that and therefore always come to such debates carefully.
	I want to say two preliminary things about the process. When the present commissioner was appointed, he came here with an extremely good reputation, and nothing that he has done since has suggested that he has not entirely sustained that reputation. Indeed, when you, Mr. Speaker, announced to the House that he was to retire at the end of the year, that was regarded with sadness in a way, but a considerable amount of respect and thanks also went to him, and we have to bear that in mind.
	The Chairman of the Committee said that the inquiry was the most difficult he had been asked to do and, on all the evidence, it was the most difficult piece of work the Committee had been asked to do—certainly in recent years. I hope that we will all give the commissioner the thanks he deserves; it was not an easy task and his report is evidence of that.
	Secondly, I endorse what colleagues have said about the Committee. When we look at the list of members, we do not find many who are not robust and independent-minded colleagues, and they come to the Committee with that reputation. Of course, they come with political views, but experience shows that they do an extremely fair and balanced job on behalf of all of us. Unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary—and there is not—we should all be clear that the Committee came to the commissioner's report afresh and formed its own view. On behalf of my colleagues, I thank all those who served on the Committee on this case, which was difficult, and others.
	I did not want to intervene more than once while the Chairman of the Committee was speaking, and he kindly answered my question, but I have some factual questions, two of which are for clarification and one other on which he may be able to help me. First, it is implied but nowhere said that before any colleague is called to appear before the Committee, or chooses to do so, they can be legally advised. It is not explicitly stated, but my understanding is that if the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) wanted to take legal advice at any stage he could do so. I assume that it is implicit, too, that the Committee could take legal advice if it wanted to do so before coming to a view. That is an important point and I hope that the Chairman can clarify it.
	Secondly, I have looked back at debates since the war on reports from the Committee or its predecessors. Many recommendations for suspension have been made, from short periods of two days to periods of a month, but an 18-day suspension has never been recommended and I wondered whether there was a reason why the Committee chose that period on this occasion.

George Young: I had not planned to intervene but perhaps I could answer the hon. Gentleman's questions. Of course, Members can take legal advice if they are under investigation and both the Committee and the commissioner have access to legal advice if we need it. The hon. Gentleman asked why we had recommended 18 sitting days. If the recommendation had been a month, when we did not know whether the House might be about to adjourn or go into a recess, we would not have been sure for how long the Member would actually be suspended. By setting an 18-day period, it is absolutely clear how many days the Member will not be in the House.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his clear answers on those two matters.
	The third matter, which is only partly for the right hon. Gentleman but which was also raised, is that it is of concern to all Members and you more than anyone, Mr. Speaker, that it appears that the report was leaked before it was brought to the House. You have taken a very clear view about that in all your rulings, and I hope that the investigation that the right hon. Gentleman has initiated will be pursued with all the seriousness that we would expect. Whoever the people concerned and whatever the issue, we must be very clear that it is unacceptable that reports on any matter from Committees of the House go into the public domain in that way. I hope that that investigation will be brought to a speedy but fair and stern conclusion.
	I want to make a couple of comments on the report itself. It is very clear from the recommendations and evidence that the judgment on the amount of campaigning done by the hon. Gentleman from the House was well based on the evidence. There is always a question of degree about how much colleagues do things here that trespass into their other political lives, but the evidence in the report is clear that the Mariam appeal was effectively run from here for eight months. The evidence is that it used a considerable amount of resource—people and so on—and that is a warning to all of us. I hope that that has been made clear, and the report reached an entirely reasonable conclusion on that matter.
	My understanding is that we also have a system that makes it clear that, if there is any doubt about whether an activity should be declared at the beginning of a debate, when we table questions or in the register, there is now a process for checking that. Constituents sometimes come to us and plead ignorance for not declaring finances in a benefits case. That may be entirely understandable, but here we have a very clear system: where there is any doubt, there is a process for establishing whether we ought to declare. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman said that he was aware at some stages that he needed to make declarations. It is pretty clear that, even if he was denying some of the things, there was a process for clarifying whether he should be on one side of the line or the other, and he clearly failed to do that. None of us has taken a personal view. It is not a view based on the fact that the hon. Gentleman is a member of one party or has left another; it is a view based on the evidence.
	On behalf of my colleagues, I thank the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee for their assiduous work in a very difficult case. This will be the end of a long and extended inquiry, made longer by legal proceedings. In the normal tradition of the House, although such matters are never whipped in any corner of the House, I shall certainly support the recommendation of the Committee, because it is absolutely against all our interests if we set up a cross-party, independently minded Committee to look into these things and it does a job over weeks and months, on advice, with a senior person helping, and we do not follow its recommendation. It was a unanimous report, and I assume and hope that the House will support it in the same way.

Theresa May: I wish to make only a few brief remarks on this matter. It is always with great regret that the House debates motions that relate to the standard of behaviour of a Member, and it does so only after a proper process of investigation, first, obviously, by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and then by the members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. In this case, those processes have been properly followed and both the commissioner and the Committee have come to their decisions after a considerable period of investigation and consideration.
	The members of the Committee are drawn from the House; they are our peers. We appoint them, we ask them to do this job, and we are grateful to them for undertaking this work on our behalf. I entirely refute the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) that they conduct themselves with anything other than absolute integrity in doing that job on our behalf.
	I should also like to pay tribute to Sir Philip Mawer, who has conducted himself in all his inquiries in his position as commissioner with both rigour and integrity. This was a lengthy and complex case, and he should be commended for his hard work and the commitment that he has shown to his task sometimes in the face of considerable provocation, as has been made clear by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young).
	My right hon. Friend has properly explained how the Committee came to its decision on the charges made, and it is absolutely clear in the report and it has been made clear this evening that, although some of the charges could have been rectified by an apology, there was certain conduct by the hon. Gentleman that the Committee considered damaged the reputation of the House. I want to make a brief remark on that aspect.
	Self-regulation in the House works only as long as all hon. Members are willing to respect the process of scrutiny that has been established by the House. We ask the commissioner to do a job on our behalf. He can do that job only if we all comply with his requirements and are willing to submit ourselves to his inquiries when required to do so.
	I note that, in paragraph 352 of the report, the commissioner says:
	"I believe that any objective reading of the record of my correspondence and interviews with Mr. Galloway will show that he has consistently failed to live up to the expectation of openness and straightforwardness in responding to questions and in other dealings which is critical to the continued effectiveness of the House's self-regulatory conduct regime."
	The reputation of the House depends on our willingness and ability to undertake that self-regulatory regime properly. The Committee has clearly found that, in failing to meet the standards required, the hon. Gentleman brought that process into disrepute and damaged the reputation of the House. I certainly intend to support the motion tonight and encourage all hon. Members to do so.

Harriet Harman: As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) says, it is always with great reluctance that the House has to debate a motion of this kind. It does so only after a full process of investigation and consideration by a recognised due process. The Committee on Standards and Privileges, following the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, published its sixth report of the 2006-07 Session, entitled "Conduct of Mr. George Galloway", last week.
	The Government have arranged this debate at a time when the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) could be present and as soon as practicable. The debate has considered the consequences of the hon. Gentleman's actions in relation to the standards of conduct that are set out by the House and that the public who elected us expect us all to uphold.
	The hon. Gentleman's actions in relation to the matters before us have been investigated by the commissioner and then considered by the Committee on Standards and Privileges. I, too, thank the commissioner, Sir Philip Mawer, for his hard work and commitment to the inquiry. I also thank the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), the Chairman of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, and all hon. Members who serve on that Committee for their work on behalf of the House.
	The Committee has concluded that the hon. Gentleman has failed to meet the standards expected and that his conduct in certain specific areas has
	"in our view damaged the reputation of the House"
	to such an extent that a suspension is called for. The right hon. Gentleman has explained the reasons for the Committee's view and for the specific term of the proposed sanction. I urge hon. Members on both sides of the House to support the motion.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House—
	(i) approves the Sixth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 909); and
	(ii) accordingly suspends Mr George Galloway, Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, from the service of the House from Monday 8th October for a period of eighteen sitting days; and in calculating that period paragraph (3) of Standing Order No. 12 (House not to sit on certain Fridays) shall not apply.

FORCED MARRIAGE (CIVIL PROTECTION) BILL  [LORDS] (PROGRAMME) (NO. 2)

Ordered,
	That the Order of 10th July 2007 (Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [Lords]
	(Programme)) be varied as follows:
	1. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Order shall be omitted.
	2. Proceedings on consideration and on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.— [Mr. David.]

Orders of the Day

Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill  [Lords]

Not amended in the  Public Bill Committee, considered.
	 Order for Third Reading read.

Bridget Prentice: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
	The Bill has now been carefully debated both here and in the other place, and I think that we can safely say that it is a shining example of cross-party co-operation to tackle the dreadful problem of people who are forced to marry. I therefore want to put on record again my thanks both to the Opposition for providing time for the Bill to be debated in the House and to the Liberal Democrats—in particular, Lord Lester—for introducing the Bill in the other place and working so hard to secure its passage there. With the noble Lord's help the Government substantially redrafted the Bill, and when it came here, we adopted it as our own. In this House, we have secured support on both sides for a Bill that will provide much-needed help for the young women—and indeed some men—who find themselves forced to marry. The Bill will go a long way towards tackling that pernicious practice. The cross-party support for the Bill has been critical in ensuring that progress.
	On Second Reading and in Committee, there were great debates on some of the most important issues raised by the Bill. It was sensible and proper that those aspects were discussed further. I will comment on one or two of the issues. There was concern that there was not sufficient consultation with stakeholders. The Government, through the forced marriage unit, have been engaged with key stakeholders since the unit was established in 2005 and we also consulted on forced marriage—including whether it should be made a criminal offence—in 2005. A wide-ranging and varied group of stakeholders responded to that consultation.
	Lord Lester, who sponsored the Bill in another place, consulted on making changes to his original Bill in February this year. Again, those who responded were wide-ranging and included experts in the field, non-governmental organisations, charities dealing with forced marriage casework, faith groups and other interested individuals. Lord Lester himself has worked with the Southall Black Sisters, which is a well-established, well-known and influential women's group working in London, as well as organisations such as Karma Nirvana in Derby and the Newham Asian Women's Project, both of which have been closely involved with the work of the forced marriage unit and have been consulted regularly.
	We also took it upon ourselves to consult a number of the family division judges, who regularly hear such cases, in order to ensure that the drafting of the legislation was appropriate. They made some helpful suggestions to improve the Bill's flexibility and I want to record my thanks to them for their contribution. In the run-up to the Lords Grand Committee, Baroness Ashton met a number of stakeholders, including Southall Black Sisters, Imkaan, Karma Nirvana, and Himat—a support group that meets the particular needs of south Asian gay and bisexual men. She also met Khatun Sapnara, a family law lawyer, who worked closely with Lord Lester in drafting the original Bill.
	I wholeheartedly agree with the points that have been made about strong community relations being key to the future success of the legislation once passed and, for that reason, I wanted to set out how important it was that we had met the different groups that have an interest in this area. In that respect, the work of the forced marriage unit, and other NGOs and charities, is critical and invaluable in raising awareness of the issue and highlighting access to support and assistance.
	The forced marriage unit, as I said in Committee, undertakes a great deal of publicity, outreach and awareness-raising work. Speeches are made at about 75 events every year. The unit runs a national publicity campaign involving radio, TV and the national and local press. As part of its two-year strategy, it will explore ways of making the outreach programme more targeted and focused on the hard-to-reach community groups and on older generations in communities that are affected by forced marriage. It is also focusing on building links with devolved Governments in the UK and with other Governments across Europe through participation in the EU Daphne-funded project, "Active Against Forced Marriage". The FMU contributes to the Foreign Office's overall work with overseas Governments to improve human rights, including tackling forced marriage and other forms of violence against women.
	The Bill is just one part of a much wider programme of work already under way to raise awareness of the problem of forced marriage and to protect women's rights in this area. It might be appropriate at this stage if I remind hon. Members that the Bill has been extended to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Executive Committee considered the inclusion of Northern Ireland in the Bill on 24 May and agreed that it was content that Westminster should legislate on devolved matters on this occasion. Likewise the Northern Ireland Assembly debated and agreed a legislative consent motion on Monday 4 June.
	There was some concern during the debates about whether there should be criminal remedies for forced marriage. The Bill offers civil remedies. As I said on Second Reading, we consulted in 2005 on whether we should introduce criminal offences for forced marriage. The majority response from stakeholders and voluntary groups with great experience in the area was that going down the route of criminalisation might be seen to target and stigmatise certain ethnic and religious communities and would simply drive the practice underground, making the situation even worse for victims. Victims of forced marriage are often unwilling to take action against their parents, and many respondents felt that the legislation would simply not be used. So, we decided against criminalisation.
	I want to make it clear, however, that clause 63R of the Bill signposts the existing protection that is available under criminal law as well as under other civil legislation. That includes the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Family Law Act 1996, a civil claim for damages, and an application under the Children Act 1989. The clause also makes it clear that the Bill will not prevent a person from seeking a remedy provided in other areas of law. So, when a crime is committed as part of a strategy designed to force someone to marry, it should be reported to the police and can be prosecuted in the normal way.
	The primary purpose of the Bill, however, is preventive. It is aimed at protecting the victim from being forced into marriage. Nevertheless, there are some cases in which the victim may wish to seek additional remedies, such as making a civil claim for damages—in cases where she could do so anyway. The clause makes it clear that nothing in the Bill prevents such an application.

Simon Hughes: The Minister is absolutely right to say that the whole purpose of the Bill is preventive. Is she satisfied that there are enough other policies in place to alert young people, as they come through our schools and as they come to adulthood in this country—whether they were born here or came here—about their rights and the protection that the law will give them? Often, by the time they learn about the law, it may be too late. If they can learn in a multicultural environment, they may have some support systems in place before it comes to the point of a forced marriage.

Bridget Prentice: The hon. Gentleman makes an important and valid point. I will come on to that and describe in some detail some of the things that the Government will do once the Bill becomes law. He is quite right that this is something that we need to raise awareness of, not just among community groups, but within schools, so that the support of the school will be one of the protections that young people can have if they feel that they, or their brothers or sisters, are being forced into a marriage. The Bill will allow a teacher, as a third party, to respond appropriately.
	The other aspect of the Bill is deterrence. Each year, the forced marriage unit receives about 5,000 calls for general advice and it ends up handling some 300 cases. Last year, the Metropolitan police recorded 518 incidents related to forced marriage. That gives us the beginning of an indication of the scale of the problem. I believe—I suspect that other hon. Members will agree with me—that, like other forms of domestic violence, forced marriage is seriously under-reported. There are likely to be many more victims who have been suffering in silence. We hope that, as well as offering protection to those who are in danger of being forced into marriage, the Bill will act as a deterrent, sending out a clear message that forced marriage will simply not be tolerated in our democracy.
	The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) raised the issue of whether we should require all British nationals who wish to marry abroad, or who may marry abroad, to register the marriage in this country before it takes place. I have considered that and I understand the point that he is making. He may wish to expand on it in this Third Reading debate. However, I repeat that such a provision may well send out the wrong message: that forced marriages only take place abroad and that the only authorities that can be trusted to recognise whether there is free and full consent are those in England and Wales. Clearly, that is not the case.
	As I said in Committee, as part of its review of immigration policy, the Home Office is working on issuing a public consultation paper about new arrangements for marriage visas entitled "Marriage to partners from overseas". One aspect of the consultation will focus on what steps can be taken as regards the requirements for sponsoring a marriage visa; for example, the minimum age could be raised to help those who are pressurised into sponsoring such a visa. That might be a more fruitful way to tackle the problem than requiring everyone who marries abroad to register their marriage in this country. I understand that the Border and Immigration Agency hopes to publish that consultation before the end of July, and to receive responses in the autumn. The forced marriage unit already works with UKvisas and the Border and Immigration Agency to stop visas being granted on the basis of a forced marriage. There were over 100 such cases involving Pakistan alone in 2006-07.
	My other concern about the proposal is that it might be disproportionate. It would affect all marriages entered into abroad, the vast majority of which are clearly legitimate and voluntary. In addition, it could catch two British citizens who are resident in the UK and who choose to marry overseas, as is quite popular nowadays. The proposal would have a significant effect on legitimate marriages, and it might make them invalid in the United Kingdom if a notice of intention to marry had not been registered. That would result in what is called limping marriages—marriages that are recognised in one country but not another. That could leave couples uncertain as to their legal rights. In the end, the measure might have a detrimental effect on legitimate marriage, rather than prevent forced marriages. For that reason, on the whole I do not think that the measure would be appropriate, although I understand what the hon. Member for Beaconsfield was trying to achieve.
	The forced marriage unit has had regard to the Bill in its presentations and has discussed its provisions on an ad hoc basis with a variety of audiences in the past six months. When the Bill reaches the statute book, the unit will of course formalise that arrangement, and it will become one of the Government's foremost means of discussing the Bill with stakeholders across the country. The unit will also re-prioritise its outreach programme. As part of that, it will look to target the specific audiences on whom the Bill will have the greatest impact.
	The unit has great access to a wide network of black and minority ethnic media outlets, and it will explore the possibility of generating further media coverage in those specialist outlets when the Bill becomes law. In the past two years, the unit has produced guidelines on tackling forced marriage for the police, social services, and health and education professionals, and it is producing similar guidelines for registrars and legal professionals. The unit recently launched a survivors' handbook, which offers information and practical support to survivors of forced marriage. Once the Bill is law, the unit will issue revised editions of its guidelines for all those organisations, in accordance with the statutory power that requires those people who exercise public functions to have due regard to relevant guidance. The new version will include advice on how professionals can use the Bill's new provisions.
	In Committee, the issue of the Bill's application to people other than named respondents was raised. New section 63B(2)(c) of the Family Law Act 1996, which is inserted by the Bill, provides that a forced marriage protection order can be directed at unnamed persons who are, or may become, involved "in other respects", such as members of the family. However, an order can be so directed only if the court believes it appropriate to make such an order for the purposes of protecting the individual concerned. That provision is necessary to reflect the real nature of forced marriage, which can come about following the involvement of a large group of people, possibly a whole family or even a community group. In many cases it simply is not feasible for the applicant to name all the potential respondents, especially if there is an urgency to the application, and it has been brought by a third party. The provision allows the court to make orders against people who appear to be involved in coercion, even if they cannot be readily identified.
	It was suggested in Committee that those categories of people should be captured by the order only if they knowingly acted in a way that might force a person into marriage, but that would be extremely difficult for any applicant to prove, and it might in effect make the provision unworkable. For the most part, being involved "in other respects" will generally require some kind of knowledge of what the lead respondent is doing; for example, counselling, encouraging or conspiring all presuppose some sort of knowledge. However, orders to protect the victim could still in theory be addressed to people who are not morally culpable in any way. An order could be addressed to any person prohibiting them from aiding, abetting or encouraging the victim to marry. To use the example mentioned in Committee, that would include the priest, if the court thought that the circumstances justified it.
	However, it is necessary to distinguish between making an order and enforcing it. The Bill does not change the current law of contempt. Before a person can be committed for contempt, the court must be satisfied that that person had sufficient knowledge of the order to know that his actions would frustrate its intention. To continue with the example of the priest, the order could not be enforced against him unless he had knowledge of the order, and intended to interfere with the administration of justice by frustrating it.
	I shall say a few words about the implementation of the Bill, because that issue is clearly of interest to the House. The first task will be to develop the necessary court rules, which will put in place the procedure for dealing with the kind of cases that we are talking about. We will take forward the drafting of the rules and the necessary court forms in conjunction with the family procedure rule committee. An early task for us is to discuss with the president of the family division the possibility of his issuing a practice direction to promote the effective handling of such cases in courts that have jurisdiction over such cases. A key element of such a practice direction is to set out what special measures are available to assist vulnerable witnesses in giving evidence.
	Committee members rightly identified the need for proper training and guidance, both on forced marriage and on the legislation, as key to ensuring that the Bill is implemented successfully, and to ensuring that we really tackle the problem of forced marriage. As my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said on Second Reading, we have the great advantage of having experienced judges in the family division, who are already used to handling such cases under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. They will be key to ensuring the success and early implementation of the Act in the High Court and in those county courts where we expect such cases to arise. In addition, the experienced staff in the forced marriage unit will be a key resource in promoting knowledge of the Act among the public service professionals on whom we—and, more importantly, the victims of forced marriage—will rely to make the legislation a success.
	The expertise of the forced marriage unit will be essential when it comes to designing the initial process to identify and consult on which bodies might be designated relevant third parties under the legislation. I gave the example of a teacher, but that would be a one-off; there are obviously more established third parties, the forced marriage unit being one of them, which could be designated relevant third parties under the legislation. Such bodies will be enabled to bring actions on behalf of victims of forced marriage without first obtaining the leave of the court.
	We have had a thorough debate on the Bill, not just on the Floor of the House and in the other place, but also in Committee. The thoughtful contributions made by all concerned have ensured that the Bill is worthy of the House's support, and I commend it to the House.

Dominic Grieve: It gives me great pleasure to follow the Minister. This is the first Bill in which I have ever been involved where the Report stage has passed without amendments being tabled. Although one worries that we may have missed something if there is too great a degree of consensus across the House, I should like to think that that properly reflects the care that has gone into making the Bill effective, and also the fact that it has commanded so much support across the House.
	We believe that the Bill will be a powerful tool in helping to prevent forced marriages or, if they have taken place, in trying to ensure that their appalling effects may be mitigated or removed. We greatly welcome the fact that the noble Lord Lester of Herne Hill introduced the Bill, and the fact that the Government were willing to take it over and to provide their expertise in its redrafting, which was substantial, while respecting the intention that had led Lord Lester to propose the measure in the first place. As a result of incorporating the provisions in the Bill into the Family Law Act 1996, the Government have produced a sensible measure that will give the courts maximum flexibility in dealing with the problem.
	I do not intend to go over the ground that the Minister covered so well. That is not the purpose of debate in the Chamber. For the Opposition, it has been a privilege to participate in the process and to make time available to ensure that the Bill could get through, whereas private Members' Bills coming from the other place usually encounter difficulty. As the Minister commented, a number of aspects that were raised in Committee merit passing reference before we send the Bill on its way.
	The first, with which the Minister dealt at some length a few minutes ago, was whether there ought to have been a criminal offence of causing a forced marriage or participating in causing a forced marriage to take place. I know that a number of Opposition Members have been exercised about that. Because forced marriage is such an unpleasant concept, there are many who feel that only by making it clear to those who participate in such enterprises that there is a criminal sanction will we mark our disapproval. That merits consideration, but a powerful case was made, particularly by those whom the Government consulted on the measure, that one of the consequences would be to discourage individuals from coming forward because of the fear that by doing so, they would bring about criminal sanctions against close relatives.
	Trying to apply my lawyer's mind to the matter, I am left with the sensation that to construct such a criminal offence would require us to look far more narrowly than the very wide definition that we have been able to give in civil proceedings. That would oblige us to highlight the fact that the offence was difficult to define. We know, for example, that it is made up of constituent ingredients, most of which are already criminal offences in themselves. Trying to encapsulate that in a single offence might be very difficult. For that reason I have consistently shied away from attempting to do so.
	If the legislation does not prove to be as effective as we hope, we may have to return to the issue. I am conscious that the record for prosecutions linked to forced marriages does not suggest that these are easy offences to prove, even though the individual offences that might currently be committed are pretty clear. I endorse the Government's approach and I hope that the flexibility gained by using the Family Law Act will produce a more effective measure than would result from introducing criminal sanctions.
	On the second matter, the registration of marriages contracted outside the UK, I am grateful to the Minister for writing to me about that and for dealing with it in this evening's debate. She made a good point when she said that we do not wish to leave people in limbo. I accept that the amendment that I proposed in Committee was never capable of being incorporated in the Bill because of the rather narrow way in which the Bill is drafted in amending the 1996 Act, and it was not my intention to leave people in limbo. There might have to be another approach, allowing registration after marriage, as well as before.
	I disagree slightly with the Minister in that I do not see the proposal as being essentially too onerous or discriminatory against the world in general. I fully accept that many countries have effective mechanisms for ensuring that forced marriages do not take place, but quite a few countries probably do not. The merit of the proposal in principle is that by requiring the intention of a resident British national to marry to be registered before the marriage takes place, it allows the registrar, for example, to make an assessment as to whether the person coming to register the marriage, who would have to be the person intending to marry, has the intellectual capacity to be capable of contracting marriage, and appears not to be coerced and to be happy at the prospect of coming along to carry out that registration.
	I hope that that idea—I say no more than that—will be borne in mind by the Government when they come to consider the other measures that the Minister helpfully outlined to the House in respect of the granting of visas and entry to the United Kingdom. A procedure that allows a British registrar of marriages or some other person to make a gentle assessment as to whether what is taking place is voluntary or not is an essential prerequisite to stopping such marriages taking place or, if they have taken place, to provide a mechanism by which a reference might be made to the court.
	Secrecy is clearly the handmaiden of such marriages. I know from personal experience, as I explained to the Minister in Committee, that there are women who are sent abroad to marry in circumstances where it is clear that their participation is not voluntary or that they are not capable of deciding whether they wish to marry. Once the marriage has taken place, it becomes much more difficult to help the person concerned and put right the evil consequences that flow from it. If it could therefore be picked up prior to the marriage taking place, that would be valuable.

Simon Hughes: Would the hon. Gentleman apply that principle in general to marriages contracted in this country? He knows that people like Paul Kenyon, who works for the BBC, have done very good work exposing the bogus marriage business. I have always had an inkling of a view that before registrars sign people up for next Saturday week, they ought to see the two parties separately to discover whether there is a valid marriage in prospect, rather than a contrived one.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Until quite recently, the rules in this country were extremely lax, although we have gone some way towards tightening them up. I am sure also—the point was well made by the Minister—that there are forced marriages taking place in this country under the very eyes of registrars or clergy of whichever denomination it may be. We have to put our own house in order. I think that we are capable of doing that, and the proposals mentioned by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) are highly pertinent in that regard.
	Although forced marriages clearly take place here, they also take place abroad, and when they take place abroad, it provides a mechanism by which people think that they can subvert scrutiny, which is something that we need to think about. However, I fully accept that the Bill is not the place to address that issue—indeed, as drafted, I could not include such a measure in the Bill, no matter what ingenuity I deployed. I hope that the Minister will forgive me for raising the matter yet again, because when we come on to other matters at some later date, I hope that the general point will be addressed, even if that does not involve my particular drafting—I accept that my provision was not well researched, because I could see the flaws in the arguments even when I was drafting it. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Government should bear in mind the intention behind that provision.
	I do not want to take up any more of the House's time. The Bill is a good Bill, and I commend it and share its commendation to the House. I simply express again the great hope that it will go some way to alleviating this serious evil.

Ann Cryer: I am delighted at last to find myself in the House discussing the implementation of legislation to counter forced marriages. How times have changed since February 1999, when I, with the support of the then Member for Halifax, Alice Mahon, first raised the issue in an Adjournment debate.
	At that time, the self-appointed leaders of communities met my comments with hostility and denial. Eight years on, it is extremely gratifying to see cross-party support to challenge what is a brutal crime against humanity based on a mediaeval, patriarchal culture that should have no place in our society. However, my delight must be tempered by a note of caution. This Bill, which has been much welcomed, cannot be the end of the matter, and there is a great deal more to do. Over the past three years, I have argued the case for a new specific criminal offence of forcing or conspiring to force someone into marriage. The main thrust of the argument in opposition to my view is that adequate criminal legislation is already in place.
	My daughter happens to work for the Crown Prosecution Service, and she kindly obtained a coffee mat—I must point out that it is not a beer mat—produced by the CPS that is headed "Forced marriage". It states:
	"If you are forcing someone into marriage, some of the offences you could be prosecuted for are: Kidnap, Threats to kill, Rape, False imprisonment, Blackmail, Child Abduction, Harassment".
	That is quite a list. However, despite the fact that the forced marriage unit, West Yorkshire police, my office and others have all seen an increasing number of cases, there has not been, as far as I am aware, a single prosecution by the CPS under current criminal legislation against such criminal activity being used to enforce marriage. It is therefore imperative that this Bill does not suffer the same fate by going unused and that it is not seen as a soft option. Its success in addressing the matter will depend on political will and ensuring that it is widely known, understood and used.
	We now have guidelines for the police, social workers, schools and health professionals to stop forced marriages. As useful and necessary as those guidelines are, I remain to be convinced that they have managed to filter through to the front line. Indeed, recently officers from one constabulary told me that the guidelines were filed somewhere in the chief constable's office. Unless the guidelines are publicised among the professionals who encounter forced marriages and training is offered, then the well-being or even the life of a young girl could be in jeopardy.
	I am pleased that the Minister has suggested that all such guidelines will be updated to include information regarding the possible actions that this Bill will enable. The Bill must not simply be filed in a desk somewhere. It must be supported by a programme of publicity and education that reaches every school, mosque and community centre in the country. The same drip feed of information that is proving so successful in tackling the wider issue of domestic violence needs to be adopted for forced marriages.
	I have some sympathy with the comments made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) in Committee and tonight regarding the introduction of a pre-marriage register. That would not only add another tier of protection from a forced marriage, but, as we discussed in Committee, give greater protection to disabled people, who might not be wholly aware of the marriage.
	Although I am delighted that we are debating the Bill, there is more that can and should be done. Young girls are still disappearing from schools at the age of 14 or 15, their education interrupted or ended, returned to the country of their parents, married, and returned here only when they are able to support an application for the husband to come to the UK. We cannot allow young women to be used as a vehicle to get round immigration rules in order to assist economic migration. We cannot allow the lives of young people to be disrupted, and in some cases destroyed, for the sake of satisfying mediaeval cultural practices. To be denied the right to an education in such circumstances is discriminatory and unacceptable.
	An increase in the age limit from the current 18 for migration to the UK must be introduced for applicants and sponsors. I have asked for it to be increased to 21. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Chris McCafferty) argued for 23 or 24, in line with the Danish regulations. Whatever the age, it must be sufficient to allow young people to go to school, and plan to go to university if they so choose, without the fear of being used, instead, as a tool to strengthen a biraderi or as a vehicle for economic migration to improve the economic well-being of families thousands of miles away. It is better by far that that should be achieved from general taxation through the Department for International Development. Denmark's Integration Minister recently argued that the Danish immigration policy
	"works exactly as it is intended. We've gotten a handle on immigration and broken the pattern where generations of young people primarily found their spouses abroad."
	Zubair Butt Hussain, spokesman for the Danish organisation Muslims in Dialogue, argued:
	"There is a completely different tendency now amongst younger groups of immigrants and their children to instead look for a partner here in Denmark or Europe."
	The time has come to abolish the whole concept of indefinite leave to remain after being in the UK for two years. Migrants should, upon arrival, aspire to and work towards citizenship. Only British citizens should be allowed to act as a sponsor for the purposes of immigration through marriage. That would not only address the incidence of forced marriage but increase the move towards greater integration and cohesion.
	Decisions and legislation designed to curb the excesses of a culture that are based on a lack of understanding of that culture are unlikely to succeed. Had the Americans bothered to attempt to understand the Vietnamese, they would have realised that theirs was a war they could never have won and should never have fought—similarly with Iraq. Likewise, to challenge criminal, inhumane practices from a position of weakness—that is, a lack of understanding as to why it occurs in the first place—will, history suggests, lead to failure.
	The Danes and the Dutch are getting there. The Bill, based as it is on our principles of tolerance and accommodation, may satisfy our understanding of the problem, but does it reflect any understanding of the perpetrators of the crime and their behaviour? I therefore have to say to the families concerned that if this measure, together with changes in immigration regulations, does not stop the enforcement of marriage, I, for one, will seek the introduction of a specific criminal offence, because we simply cannot go on like this—our British-born young Asian women deserve better.

Jo Swinson: I welcome this Third Reading debate, which follows a productive and consensual Second Reading and Committee stage. The Minister adeptly outlined many of the issues surrounding the Bill, so I will keep my remarks fairly brief, but there are a few points that I would like to put on the record on behalf of my party.
	My first point follows on from the comments of the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) about the offence being a civil, rather than a criminal, one. She made a good case for looking again at that issue, if the legislation does not provide the tools and armoury we hope for to tackle this insidious activity. The arguments in favour of a civil offence are very strong, and we want to ensure that we encourage potential victims of forced marriage to come forward without fear or concern that their loved ones will be criminalised as a result. Although sending out a strong message by making something a crime is superficially attractive, I suspect that we want the approach that works, and one that is more pragmatic is more likely to achieve results. That is not to say, however, that we should not monitor that approach carefully and ensure that it does achieve results.
	I welcome the Minister's correspondence with Committee members. I welcome the fact that she has taken up two particular points that I raised in Committee. The first concerned ensuring that vulnerable victims of forced marriage, such as children or those with learning disabilities, are adequately considered in the proceedings, and that provision is made to ensure that their voices are heard, with whatever special measures are appropriate. In Committee, and in the House today, the Minister said that she would take that up with the president of the family division with regard to the issuing of practice direction, which is welcome. I hope that it ensures that everyone can benefit from the legislation, particularly the most vulnerable.
	Secondly, we had a short debate about guidance in Committee. The Minister said in her letter:
	"With the passage of the Forced Marriage Bill into law, the FMU's Guidelines for Professionals (including Guidance For The Police, Social Workers, Teachers And Health Professionals) will be put onto a statutory footing. This will require the FMU to issue revised editions of these Guidelines and the new versions will include advice on how professionals can best make use of the new provisions contained within the Forced Marriage Bill."
	That is welcome, but the problem outlined by the hon. Member for Keighley remains—guidance can sometimes end up in a filing cabinet somewhere. As well as formal legal guidance, which must be issued, I reiterate what I said in Committee: it is vital that clear, easy-to-understand information is made easily available, such as a simple leaflet that can be distributed more widely than what is issued to professionals.
	The Minister mentioned the budget. She said in Committee that how well something is publicised depends on funds being available. We live in the real world; there are always constraints. I argue that the costs associated with this are not necessarily huge. What is important is not that huge amounts of money are spent—although the more, the better, to ensure that information reaches the maximum number of people—but that the Bill is distilled into plain English so that people can understand it. I suspect it will need not only to be in plain English but to be made plain in other languages, too. The hon. Member for Keighley made a point about the legislation not remaining unused, and clear guidance will be essential to ensure that it is used.
	The outreach programme from the forced marriage unit, which the Minister outlined, is important and greatly welcome, and I also welcome her point that devolved Governments will be involved in the process. People are victims of this situation throughout the United Kingdom, and we must ensure that the expertise of the FMU is put to good use.
	In conclusion, the FMU deals with 300 cases a year of people in the most desperate situations, who are often subject to an horrific catalogue of crimes, from violence to kidnap and rape. Those 300 cases could be just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, prevention is much better than cure, and if the legislation ensures a route out before such marriages take place, victims will be provided with another option. I very much hope that that will be the case.
	All the organisations that were consulted about and involved in shaping the Bill and all the people who campaigned on the issue for many years, including the hon. Member for Keighley, deserve the thanks of the House. I also thank my noble Friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill for introducing the measure in another place, the Government for adopting it to ensure that it had a fighting chance of making it to the statute book—that is much appreciated—and, of course, the Conservatives for making sure that parliamentary time was made available. Getting the Bill on to the statute book has therefore taken an effort of the whole House, and I am delighted to add Liberal Democrat support to its Third Reading.

Simon Hughes: I am glad of the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) to say a few words from a constituency perspective and from my experience. I have been unable to participate in the debates so far in the short time that the Bill has been before the House, but I am glad that it is here.
	I join hon. Members' tributes not only to the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) but to Alice Mahon, whom she mentioned. Such people ensure that we do not run away from the difficult issue that we are considering. My hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire rightly paid tribute to my noble Friend Lord Lester. As a human rights lawyer, he understood the importance of the issue in many communities. I want to share my experience to show how important it is not only to accept the Bill, but to perceive it as unfinished work.
	Last year I attended a wedding of some friends, a young couple who are Indian Hindus. Their marriage was contracted willingly, but in the context of an arranged family get-together. That is common; it is fine, and it works. I attended a similar marriage between cousins of theirs some years ago. That marriage has been successful. The family live near me and I see them almost every day; they have lovely children and everything is going well.
	However, one night some years ago I was asked to respond to a Green Card from Central Lobby. A young man had been referred to me because his family were trying to drive him into a marriage and he could not stand it any longer. He ran away from home. I was not his Member of Parliament, but he had been given my name as somebody who might be helpful, and I worked with his Member of Parliament, who was in a different party, to support the young man.
	In the past couple of weeks I learned—sadly, too late—of some acquaintances, a boy and a girl, who have both been forced to be married. In their case, the violence was not physical but psychological, and there were huge other pressures. The girl is only 20 and wants to study. She does not want to get married at the moment. The boy wants to go on being single for the foreseeable future. However, they have given in. In their case, the arrangement was made on a trip to Pakistan, where the engagement happened. The marriage took place here.
	Many young people—boys as well as girls, men as well as women—are in the position that I described. The Bill covers people who are forced into marriage without their "free and full consent"—the words are clear and simple. It clearly provides that it does not matter where the conduct is directed, and that it includes coercion by threats or other psychological means. We must send a clear and strong signal about what that means.
	Sometimes young women do not simply not want to get married to a specific person, they do not want to get married at all at that stage in their lives. They may want to remain single; indeed, they may never want to get married, for various reasons. That is a choice. The same applies to young men. When cultural pressures are huge, people are often assumed to be ready to settle down, get married and have children young when they do not want to do that. That applies to people who are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, those who do not know their sexuality and those have not determined the lifestyle that they want to adopt. They are often driven to comply with the norms and expectations of their families, and the pressures are enormous.
	The 300 cases of forced marriage are the tip of the iceberg. I am absolutely clear that we are not talking about thousands of people in this country, but about tens of thousands of people who are married, but who would chose not to be married if they had their free will. I am not saying that in the end people do not make a go of it, or that sometimes people do not accept that, but that is not the society that we should encourage or support. We should allow people to make their own choices. Of course we try to encourage people to settle down into relationships. None the less, we should require that people get married only when they are clear what they are doing, and when they enter into marriage freely and willingly.
	I want to make my two final points, one of which I made in my intervention on the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). Instinctively, I am against the creation of lots of legislation, and particularly lots of new offences, as the Minister knows. Therefore it is right to start with a civil procedure rather than further criminal law, because there are already relevant laws on the statute book. However, I am also clear that we need to address the linked questions of how we register marriages both here and abroad, and how we recognise marriages here that are made abroad, some of which are made by custom and practice and are barely marriages at all. Sometimes people have come to my surgery and said, "I'm married." "How were you married?" I have asked. The answer is that they were married when one person was in this country and the other in another. The marriage was contracted without those involved being in the same place. Let us face up to these things.
	It is not so easy to do this now, but there has been a sad tradition, for all the reasons that we know, of people forcing others to get married or using their marriages to get all the other advantages—normally citizenship, residency or leave to remain. We should examine that. I invite the Minister to give us an opportunity to examine—perhaps with her colleagues, who I know are very sympathetic—the broader issue that the hon. Member for Keighley has often raised, of ensuring that the systems are not abused, and of how we can, as it were, turn people away from the doors of the registry office, the registrar, the temple, the gurdwara, the mosque or the church, when one or both of them do not want to be there, or the marriage is a contrivance.
	My final point is about education. The Minister represents a similar sort of constituency to mine, while the hon. Member for Beaconsfield has significant links with many of our minority communities and my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire has done work on behalf of women in our party and beyond. We all know the reality: education starts at an early age. One needs to establish, at the beginning of secondary school, the basis of how this country works, and expects people to get married. That should be done not just through formal education but through informal education, including youth clubs and other organisations. There are some really good charities that help people—the Minister referred to some voluntary organisations with good practice—as well as women's organisations, youth organisations and so on. I hope that we will continue to encourage those organisations, to ensure that we get the message out early—in all the appropriate languages, as my hon. Friend said—and that we give support.
	That is particularly important in single-faith schools, where the cultural pressures are greater. In mixed-community schools, where people come from all faiths and none, the chances of having a friend who does not come from the same cultural background in whom one can confide are much greater. A young person who goes to an all-Muslim, all-Sikh or all-Hindu school is in much greater difficulty. I have had to counsel people who have had nobody in whom they could confide, because they just did not trust those around them—the uncle, aunt or equivalent of the godparent—because they were not sure whether, in the end, they would come down on their side or the side of the parents and the cousins. Sadly, on one occasion I have seen the family come and kidnap somebody, in order to take them home to do their will as a family.
	That is the sort of society that we still have, so the Bill, which is the result of a worthwhile private Member's initiative, is timely. However, legislating is the beginning of the process, not the end. Education needs to follow, and to reach the parts that other education has not reached. Beyond that, I hope that we can have a further debate about how to stop people from being driven into marriages that they do not want to enter into, because that way lies huge unhappiness, often domestic violence, mental illness and psychological upset, and extremely unhappy lives. If we can spare tens of thousands of people that, we will be doing a lot of people a good service.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed , without amendment. .

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With the permission of the House, I shall put together motions 4 to 13.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Criminal Law

That the draft Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 (Amendment) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 21st May, be approved.

Investigatory Powers

That the draft Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Acquisition and Disclosure of Communications Data: Code of Practice) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 11th June, be approved.
	That the draft Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Investigation of Protected Electronic Information: Code of Practice) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 11th June, be approved.

Passports

That the draft Verification of Information Passport Applications Etc. (Specified Persons) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 29th June, be approved.

Access to Justice

That the Revised Funding Code prepared by the Legal Services Commission, a copy of which was laid before this House on 14th June, be approved.

Industrial Development

That the draft Financial Assistance For Industry (Increase of Limit) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 19th June, be approved.

Constitutional Law

That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 20th June, be approved.
	That the draft Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) (Amendment) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 2nd July, be approved.

International Development

That the draft International Fund for Agricultural Development (Seventh Replenishment) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 21st June, be approved.

Disabled Persons

That the draft Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (Amendment etc.) (General Qualifications Bodies) (Alteration of Premises and Enforcement) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 26th June, be approved. —[Mr. David.]
	 Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9)(European Standing Committees),

Global Approach to Migration

That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 9773/07, Commission Communication on the application of the EU Global Approach to Migration to the Eastern and South-Eastern Regions Neighbouring the European Union and No. 9776/07, Commission Communication on circular migration and mobility partnerships between the European Union and third countries; and supports the Government's position that the expansion of the Global Approach to Migration provides an opportunity to assess progress so far as well as explore and clarify the concepts of circular migration and mobility partnerships. —[Mr.  David.]
	 Question agreed to .

Sittings in Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That, on Thursday 26th July, there shall be no sitting in Westminster Hall.—— [Mr.  David.]

Philip Hollobone: I am very concerned about this motion. It is not the first of its kind to appear at the end of a parliamentary term, and I object to it on the ground that I can see absolutely no reason why the Thursday sitting in Westminster Hall should be suspended on the last day on which Parliament sits. The public are rightly concerned that MPs go away for an 11 or 12-week recess, which, perhaps unfairly, they regard as a long summer break for Members of Parliament. In that regard, it seems extraordinary for the Government effectively to propose that the very last opportunity for a Westminster Hall sitting should not be taken.
	I am disturbed, not only because that will be the last opportunity for such a debate before the summer recess, but because Westminster Hall now offers an extremely good opportunity for Back Benchers to raise and debate issues of concern. The quality of debate in the Thursday sittings has been quite extraordinary. In the past few weeks, for example, we had a very good debate on anti-Semitism, which is an issue of huge concern to many of us. There has also been a very good debate on the changes to legal aid services—an issue that affects most Members and their constituents.
	The Government's motion sends the wrong signal to the great British public: namely, that Parliament is not to be given an opportunity to discuss issues of concern on that day, especially under the present prime ministership. We were promised just a few weeks ago that the Prime Minister wanted to put Parliament back at the centre of British public life. We are not talking about a huge amount of parliamentary time; we are talking about a three-hour debate in Westminster Hall. It is extraordinary that the Government should seek to squash three hours of parliamentary debate.
	I could suggest a list of subjects that would be worthy of three hours of parliamentary time, not least those dealing with the way in which my Kettering constituents are affected by Government policy. We could also discuss some of the Select Committee reports that have come up for debate in Westminster Hall. We have been promised that the work of the Select Committees is to be more greatly valued by the present Administration than it was by the previous one. What better opportunity could there be than to devote the last three hours of parliamentary debate in Westminster Hall to discussing a recent Select Committee report?
	If the Government are short of ideas on that front, perhaps I could suggest the recent excellent report from the Transport Committee, on which I sit, on novice drivers. It proposed the raising to 18 of the age at which young people may take their driving test, on the basis that we now face the horrendous prospect of 1,000 young drivers a year losing their lives on British roads. A debate would provide a wonderful opportunity for a Transport Minister to come along to Westminster Hall and listen to Members' views and provide an early response to the report on behalf of the Government.
	My concern is that, time and again, at the end of every parliamentary Session, the Government try prematurely to end debating opportunities in Westminster Hall. I would very much like to hear from the Deputy Leader of the House why this motion is being moved and, if it were to be passed this evening, what plans she has to reinstate an extra three hours of parliamentary debate.

Helen Goodman: I do not intend to delay the House long, as the motion is quite straightforward. I was pleased to hear how much the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) values Westminster Hall debates, which were introduced, of course, by this Government as an innovation designed to give Back Benchers further opportunities to initiate debate. I remind the hon. Gentleman, however, that it is not the case that Ministers cannot be called to account between the beginning of the recess and our return in October, because the Government have introduced written questions in September. I am sure that he will be aware of that option.
	The motion asks us to agree that this Thursday's sitting in Westminster Hall should not take place. The hon. Member for Kettering may not be aware of the consultation on the motion with the political parties, with Mr. Speaker and with the Chairman of Ways and Means, during which no objection was raised by any of the parties. I encourage the hon. Gentleman and all hon. Members with further issues to raise to participate in the pre-recess Adjournment debate on Thursday. There will be plenty of time—indeed, more time than would have been available in Westminster Hall—to raise issues that are important to hon. Members and their constituents. I commend the motion to the House.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) for ensuring that we do not allow this motion through on the nod. I accept what the Deputy Leader of the House says about consultation, although it would have applied to my predecessor rather than to me in my new job, shadowing the hon. Lady's office. I would like to pick up a couple of issues that follow on from the debate.
	I welcome Westminster Hall debates, which were a good initiative. I was personally saddened that, because of the two parliamentary by-elections last Thursday, I could not attend the debate on the important subject of anti-Semitism. Those are exactly the sort of debates that we should be having in Westminster Hall.
	Will the Deputy Leader of the House reflect on the fact—either now, with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or later—that we appear to have lost one of the Government's good initiatives: cross-cutting debates in Westminster Hall? There was a period when we had them, but—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is not a wide-ranging debate on the purposes of Westminster Hall. It is simply about the motion on the Order Paper.

Simon Hughes: I will rein back, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and talk about the opportunities presented by this Thursday's sitting for a cross-cutting debate, which appear to have disappeared.
	The general argument that the House should lose its Westminster Hall debate on the last day of the Session on the grounds that there is a perfectly reasonable debate on the Floor of the House is not an overwhelming one. I can see the logic of the argument, but the alternative of providing an opportunity to debate Select Committee or other reports in Westminster Hall is equally logical. For example, the Defence Committee recently produced a very important report on overstretch among our forces, particularly in Afghanistan. That is a vital issue, so our failure to debate it before we go into the long summer recess seems to be a dereliction of our general duty.

Philip Hollobone: I am following the hon. Gentleman's remarks with a great deal of interest. Does he agree that although the Deputy Leader of the House says that the issues can be covered in the Adjournment debate on the main Floor of the House, we are losing three hours of parliamentary airtime, which will be denied to Back Benchers and others for ever unless she makes proposals to reinstate them?

Simon Hughes: I have been here long enough to know that at this stage in the proceedings the machine is rolling sufficiently strongly that to change it would be surprising if not impossible. The Deputy Leader of the House tells me that consultations have taken place, and it would be embarrassing to my colleague, whoever agreed to the proposal, if I suddenly put a spoke in the works. One of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues must have agreed to the proposal, too. Clearly, at some stage, someone addressed the question and decided that, as this Thursday is the last day of our summer term, we would concentrate all our resources on the end-of-term wind-up debate here.
	One of the other reasons why losing anything is to be regretted—I shall return to this because I will be on duty on Thursday—is that it is scandalous that we go away in July to come back in October. I have always taken the view—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not the motion before the House.

Simon Hughes: I am keeping my remarks in order by saying that if we do not have a debate on Thursday, as the motion proposes, we lose an opportunity that we cannot come back to, because there will not be another debate in Westminster Hall until October. I think that that is scandalous, and I think that the public think that it is scandalous. We should have debates here and in Westminster Hall, without huge periods elapsing between them.
	I indicated that we will return to this matter on Thursday. I know that there has been consultation about the summer timetable, too. I just say, as an early shot across the bows, to the Deputy Leader of the House and her colleague, the Leader of the House, whom she knows I respect, that the Government will have to come back to these issues. I hope that under the new regime—new Prime Minister, Ministers, Leader of the House and Deputy Leader of the House—we will look again at the timetable and will not have occasions when we are asked to cut short our business and reduce the amount of time for debate and for holding the Government to account. I hope that the Government, in tune with what the new Prime Minister says, will give Parliament more opportunity to hold them to account, not just on the last days of the summer term, but on many other occasions.
	 Question put and agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Ordered,
	That the Home Information Pack (No. 2) Regulations 2007 (S.I. 2007, No. 1667) and the Housing Act 2004 (Commencement No. 8) (England and Wales) Order 2007 (S.I. 2007, No. 1668) be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee.—— —[Mr. Blizzard.]

PETITION

Housing (Kettering)

Philip Hollobone: Before I read out the petition, I want to pay a huge tribute to Mr. John and Mrs. Pat Brunige of 4 Warkton village, Kettering, who have laboured night and day to collect the signatures in association with the petition.
	The petition states:
	To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled
	The humble petition of:
	Mr. John Brunige and others of like disposition listed below, which in total number 5,359
	Sheweth
	That new housing development proposed for Kettering and its surrounding area will only be sustainable and of general benefit for the whole area if the necessary additional infrastructure to support the new population is put in place ahead of or in parallel with new housing construction
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House shall urge the Department of Communities and Local Government to consider the plight of Mr. Brunige and the other Petitioners and either bring forward firm plans to provide the necessary infrastructure or stop the housing expansion plans.
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

BIOMETRIC DATA (SCHOOLS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Blizzard.]

Greg Mulholland: In this country, thousands of schools are collecting fingerprints or other forms of biometric data from pupils as young as three. They are collected for registration, the lending of library books and the administration of school dinners. Several enterprising companies contact schools directly to sell these packages and the benefits that they bring. Yet the Department for Children, Families and Schools—

Jim Knight: The Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Greg Mulholland: I accept the Minister's correction; it is something we are all getting used to. I congratulate him on retaining his job.
	The new Department has no idea in how many schools this is happening. Despite the fact that unofficial surveys would suggest that it is taking place in every local education authority area in the country, the Government have no records of how many schools are collecting biometric data. That was revealed in an answer by the former Schools Minister, the right hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), in February 2006:
	"We are aware that some schools do hold a photograph of pupils on their management information systems; use fingerprint scanners for the twice daily attendance registration of pupils; or use iris-scanners. However, my Department does not collect any information on how many schools use such equipment or hold photos or any other biometric data on their systems."—[ Official Report, 27 February 2006; Vol. 443, c. 505W.]
	Yet a survey conducted by the campaigning organisation Leave them Kids Alone has estimated that 3,500 primary and secondary schools now use biometric data systems and that approximately 750,000 children have been fingerprinted by their schools. It is estimated that 20 new schools a week are being added to those figures. Therefore, the issue needs to be addressed.
	One thing is certain: we may not know how many schools this is happening in, but we do know that parents are often not being asked for consent and in many cases are not even being informed. Some schools will send a letter home—some do so before the system is introduced, some afterwards—but there is no requirement to do that. There is real concern among parents, parent groups and civil liberties organisations, which, I am afraid, up to this point has been ignored by the Government. Indeed, in responding to requests to devote parliamentary time to the issue, the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said:
	"I am not aware of the practice, but obviously people have accepted it."—[ Official Report, 25 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 1567.]
	That is absolutely not the case. David Coulter, who runs Leave them Kids Alone, has reported that over 1,500 parents polled between July and September last year were against the use of fingerprinting systems. He has received more than 300 complaints from disaffected parents in one month alone.
	I am delighted that finally—and, it seems, entirely coincidentally—the Department published the long-awaited guidance for schools on the issue today. That is welcome. However, as well as being overdue, it still leaves uncertainty as to the rights of parents and pupils to object, a point to which I shall return.
	To give the background to the issue, biometric systems are being used for attendance, borrowing library books and cashless lunch systems. A form of biometric data such as a fingerprint or retinal image is collected and converted by an algorithm into a unique binary number. This is then stored in encrypted form and checked against the corresponding number every time the pupil places his thumb on a scanner allowing that pupil to borrow a library book or to buy lunch in the canteen. As a result of the encryption process, and because the fingerprint is stored as a number rather than a fingerprint, it is claimed by the companies who provide these systems that it cannot be reverse-engineered, and therefore, it is secure and not open to identity fraud or theft. However, that is not strictly accurate. Independent technology experts have stated that in their opinion it is impossible to say that data will remain secure. Advances in technology mean that it is inaccurate to say that it will not be possible to reverse-engineer the data stored in order to obtain the original fingerprint.
	There is also concern about how the data is stored. It is generally stored on small school networks or stand-alone PCs, with the most basic level of firewall protection and anti-theft protection, or it is held by the agencies who provide the technologies—and we are talking, of course, about an industry that is unregulated. Further, as Action on Rights for Children points out, schools are not secure places. Theft of school equipment is alarmingly frequent and IT equipment is a magnet for thieves. The Metropolitan police recorded 7,500 school burglaries between 2000 and 2004. Outside London, local crime figures suggest that at least one school a day is burgled in each police area.
	Andrew Clymer is a senior identity management security expert with more than eight years of experience working for organisations such as Cisco Systems, Visa, Fidelity and Merrill Lynch. He says
	"There is an element of risk storing thumbprint"
	templates
	"on a school computer. No system can guarantee the security of information against future technology. Attempting to protect lifetime relevant information is extremely tricky and potentially costly."
	Banks invest millions of pounds in constantly updating and adapting their security systems to prevent identity fraud, but how can schools be expected to do the same? However, unlike a bank personal identification number—PIN—biometric data cannot be changed in the event of theft or identity fraud, and a person's biometric data remains the same for a lifetime. Therefore, once stolen, it is compromised forever.
	How long data is stored is also an issue. Schools act independently. Some might destroy the data they hold as soon as the child leaves school, but there is nothing to stop them keeping the data for longer, or permanently, if they have sufficient storage space. Not only does that raise questions about whether the data could be used by organisations, including the police or security services, in later life, or indeed while the child is still at school, it raises further concerns about the security of the data and the chance that it might be compromised.
	There is also the question of whether biometric information collected in schools is prohibited by data protection legislation. The Government's defence is that the information stored is not sensitive, but how can that be the case? The data is unique to each individual. As plans are being drawn up to introduce cash machines that use biometric data such as fingerprints, not to mention biometric passports, how can the Government suggest that that is not sensitive data?
	The fundamental issue, however, is that of parental consent—or rather the lack of it in respect of the collection of biometric data in schools. Many schools collect that data without directly consulting parents, never mind obtaining explicit parental permission. An online poll last summer of 1,400 parents by Leave Them Kids Alone found that 94 per cent. were against schools taking biometric data without parental consent. Many parents have contacted MPs and Ministers to express their outrage following their discovery that biometric data had been collected from their children without their knowledge, never mind their consent. Action on Rights for Children states:
	"Given the seriousness of the issues involved, it is nothing short of astonishing that children's fingerprints are being taken without parental knowledge or consent."
	Some parents have taken the step of withdrawing their children from systems such as cashless lunch arrangements, but that is not without consequence, and many parents fear that their children might be stigmatised or marginalised as a result. If parents were given the right to withdraw consent and did so to any extent, the use of biometric systems would be entirely undermined. An alternative system would need to be in place. However, instead of there needing to be two systems, why not have one system that works and that delivers the same benefits as biometric data systems, without issues and concerns?
	The lack of guidance has been a concern. Regardless of what the Minister might say, there has been a U-turn. In an answer to a written question last year, the former Schools Minister said:
	"My Department has issued no guidance to schools on the collection and recording of pupils' biometric information. In collecting data of this type the school is likely to rely on the broad powers contained in paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 of the Education Act 2002. This enables a governing body to do anything which appears to them to be necessary or expedient for the purposes of, or in connection with the conduct of the school."—[ Official Report, 27 February 2006; Vol. 443, c. 504W.]
	Today, finally, the guidance is published. I welcome that, but it is six months after the Government said that they would publish it and it is very conveniently timed for this debate. However, the Government still have not fundamentally addressed the issue of whether parents have the right to be asked for consent: the guidance merely says that they should be asked. It is welcome that parents should be fully informed about how their children's biometric data will be used, what is involved, what data will be held and stored, why it is required, how it will be secured, and for how long it will be retained. However, the guidance critically fails to introduce a legal requirement for parental consent to be obtained before a child's biometric data can be collected. That is unacceptable, on such a critical issue that has so many ramifications for the children involved and the security of their personal data. The only way to resolve the problem is to introduce a legal requirement for consent.
	The collection of biometric data by schools is not necessary. There are reasons why schools are buying such systems and why the companies are telling schools that it is a good idea to do so. They suggest reasons of efficiency; traceability, of library books, for example; or identification of pupils who qualify for free school meals without revealing that to other pupils. But all those could equally be achieved by swipe cards. It is interesting to note that swipe cards are 100 per cent. accurate when passed over a reader, but biometric systems such as fingerprint scanners are only 93 per cent. accurate. So they are less accurate than swipe cards and considerably more expensive.
	Will the Minister clarify the situation regarding e-learning credits? There is some confusion about what part of such systems can or cannot be purchased with e-learning credits. Many parents feel that it is not an appropriate use of e-learning credits, but I would welcome the Minister's comments.
	In conclusion, this is a real issue that needs to be addressed. I am glad that the Minister and the Department are taking it seriously and have finally published guidance.
	It raises many issues, including those of security, consent and information, as well as benefit, necessity and cost. I mean cost not only in monetary terms, but in the possible ramifications and consequences of the introduction of that practice. The Government have been too slow to listen and too slow to act. They are finally engaging with the issue, but their response is still inadequate. It is not enough to say that parents should be consulted. They must be consulted, if biometric data, such as fingerprints, are to be taken from their children. Like a child's safety on a school trip, the collection of a child's fingerprints or other biometric data is enormously important, and should be treated with the same respect.
	Given all the problems and concerns about the issue, which have been raised by parents, parents' groups and civil liberties groups over the past few months, I have come to the conclusion that the costs of introducing that technology into our schools utterly outweigh any positive benefits that may ensue. The collection of biometric data in our schools is unnecessary, intrusive and insecure. A can of worms has been opened and, as yet, the Government have failed adequately to close it. The situation is now a little clearer, but we want real clarity. The only way to achieve real clarity is for the Government to say that schools must always ask parents for consent before taking biometric data from children.

Jim Knight: I thank the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) for raising such an important issue. The subject has generated a great deal of debate, some controversy and a lot of mythology. The hon. Gentleman has written to me and questioned me several times about the issue, so I welcome this opportunity to try to offer him further reassurance, although as he said the response was inadequate, he may have prejudged me.
	For some time, I have been keen to publish guidance on how the secure use of biometric technologies can support efficient school management, and we did so today. The guidance was produced in consultation with the Information Commissioner. Once the debate was announced, I was determined to have the guidance published by today so that the debate could be informed by it, and I am grateful to officials and to the commissioner for their co-operation in ensuring that we could do so. The guidance was produced on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency—the Government agency that leads our national drive to improve learning through technology. I have placed a copy of the guidance in the Library and it will soon be available on the BECTA website. The Information Commissioner has also produced a complementary statement, which I shall ensure is available on the commissioner's website. Furthermore, Members will have noticed the publication of a written ministerial statement on the subject today.
	The debate is driven by the legitimate need to ensure that the privacy of pupils is both respected and protected, but unfortunately it is characterised by some significant misconceptions and I hope that I can address them effectively today. It is important to clarify exactly what we mean by biometric data. The biometric element in this case, as the hon. Gentleman said, is an algorithmic representation of a fingerprint—not the recording of a fingerprint. It is extremely important that people understand that it is not the recording of a fingerprint, but the algorithmic representation of one.
	In plain English, the technology derives a unique numerical value from a fingerprint—a number to identify an individual pupil. Images of actual fingerprints are neither created, nor are they stored. The number is linked to basic identifying data about the pupil such as their name and form. That means that biometric data stored by schools are of no more practical use than that stored on the swipe-card system to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
	Biometric data are in common use for security and identification purposes; indeed, I have fingerprint recognition on my laptop. Some schools see biometric technology as a practical solution to some of the day-to-day issues they face. In a number of instances, schools may find it helpful and effective to collect and use biometric data.
	I have seen at first hand how such systems can help the running of schools—maintaining accurate attendance records, enabling cashless canteens to be introduced and maintaining accurate and efficient library records. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman said, there are alternative solutions for improving school management and administration, including the use of smartcards.
	Smartcards are not without their own issues, however, as I saw recently on a visit to a school in Harrow. As happens in many other schools, a child's family is charged £5 every time a card is lost, which is a common occurrence and £5 that many families can ill afford—it is clearly much more difficult to lose one's finger. Not only can swipe cards easily be lost or forgotten, they can also be swapped between pupils, causing a particular problem for maintaining accurate attendance records, which could put the education and safety of our children at risk.
	Using biometric data means that there are no cards to be lost. In addition, if the technology is used in the canteen, pupils no longer need to carry money, thus helping to reduce opportunities for bullying and theft. Cashless canteens, which can be facilitated by swipe cards, mean that it is not possible to tell who is receiving free school meals, thereby reducing stigma and increasing take-up.
	It is up to schools to decide whether any of those systems will work for them. We certainly do not advocate one technology over another, or technology for technology's sake. We want schools to adopt it where it makes sense for them. The hon. Gentleman refers to answers from the then Schools Minister, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department that referred to the Education Act 2002. That Act enables governing bodies to do anything that is necessary or expedient for the purposes of, or in connection with, the conduct of the school or the provision of facilities or services. As a result, schools are free to use biometric technologies in the ways that I describe if they feel that it will help the school to run more smoothly, in accordance with data protection legislation and with regard to the guidance that we have issued.
	I want to turn now to the concerns that have been raised about the implications for privacy. There are several safeguards in place that I want to draw to the attention of the House. First, the Data Protection Act 1998 protects against the improper use of all types of data, including biometric data. As part of their responsibilities under the Act, schools have a duty to ensure that personal data are kept secure. Today's additional guidance will make it clear how the law relates to biometric data and advise schools on how to comply with it. By law, such data can only be used for their stated purpose; they cannot be shared with third parties beyond that stated purpose, and they must be destroyed when pupils leave their schools. Some have raised concerns about, for example, the police using such data. Not only do we know of no circumstance where biometric data have been used by the police, but they could only access the data as part of an investigation into a specific crime. There certainly can be no read-across to other databases.
	Schools already hold pupils' personal details. Information such as a pupil's address, date of birth and reports from social services are securely held as a matter of routine. I am sure that no one would argue that schools should not collect and store that information while pupils attend school. Many of those data are much more sensitive than an algorithmic number, generated by a fingerprint. Schools are used to holding such data securely and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 1998, and the introduction of biometric data does not represent a significant addition.
	Schools and local authorities are responsible for developing their own policies about the information that they wish to collect and hold, subject to relevant legislation on data protection and freedom of information. There have been calls for the Government to introduce further regulation specifically to clarify how biometric data can be collected and used. As I have stated, that is already covered by existing legislation and is not necessary. It would also go against the essential principle of giving governing bodies the freedom to manage their school as they see fit, free from unnecessary interference from Whitehall, which is something that hon. Members on both sides of the House keep asking me to bear in mind.
	Secondly, as I stated earlier, it is not possible to recreate a fingerprint using the numbers that are stored. The algorithm generates a unique number, producing no information of any use to identity thieves. I shall quote from a statement from the Information Commissioner's Office—a thoroughly independent source—that says in the third paragraph:
	"Full fingerprint images are not stored and cannot be generated ('reverse engineered') from the template."
	I hope that that is clear to all those listening, because it is an important reassurance on the points that the hon. Gentleman has made.
	Thirdly, pupils and, where appropriate, parents must be fully informed of the data collected and kept, through a fair processing notice, as part of the data protection legislation. No data can be collected without their knowledge. That is common sense and a central principle of the guidance that we will publish tomorrow.
	Fourthly, the use of biometric data in schools does not, as some say, edge us closer to a surveillance society any more than taking the register at the start of class ever has. By law, the data cannot be shared. There are no fingerprints to be handed to the police or stolen by anyone, nor any personal data that are not already held electronically by every school in the land.
	This is technology introduced for the benefit of our pupils and teachers. It is not "1984" by the backdoor. There are no sinister forces at work here, and I would argue that it is irresponsible to suggest otherwise to get some cheap headlines.
	I recognise, however, that although schools are acting legally and that all data collected will be handled in line with the Data Protection Act 1998, some parents may want further information. The guidance clearly lays out the legal position for schools. It advises head teachers on the practical and legal steps they need to follow if they decide to introduce the technologies. It will help schools to operate such systems, while respecting the wishes of pupils and parents who do not wish to participate. The guidance specifically recommends that schools give pupils and parents with genuine concerns the opportunity to opt out. Those who choose to do so should be offered an alternative means of accessing the same services. We have had some reassurance that the sorts of technology that might be used in the dining hall, the library, or for attendance could be interchanged with the use of swipe cards.
	The guidance also encourages schools to be open and clear with parents, providing straightforward information on the nature and use of biometric technologies through a fair processing notice. I understand parents' concerns if they believe that images of their children's fingerprints are being taken and stored. That is a perfectly legitimate concern and I am sure that many of the parents to whom the hon. Gentleman referred are raising exactly that concern. It needs to be made clear to them that that is not the case: images of fingerprints are not being kept or stored. An algorithmic number is being generated from those fingerprints that cannot be reverse engineered.
	I have seen how biometric data can have a very positive impact in schools. The technology does not put pupils' information at increased risk, nor does it imply a criminalisation of our children. It is the decision of the individual school, in consultation with parents, whether to introduce the technology. It is a way for head teachers to improve the administration and safety of their schools. For many, it may be common sense. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman about the use of biometric data in schools.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes to Ten o'clock.